Can Richard review three movies in just thirty seconds? Have a look as he races against the clock to tell you about “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” “King Richard” and “The Power of the Dog.”
Find out HERE!
Richard speaks to “CTV News at Six” anchor Andria Case about the best movies and television to watch this weekend including the rebooted “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” the fourth film in “Ghostbusters” franchise, the inspirational new Will Smith movie “King Richard” and Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Power of the Dog.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 35.52)
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Lois Lee to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including the rebooted “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” the fourth film in “Ghostbusters” franchise, the inspirational new Will Smith movie “King Richard” and Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Power of the Dog.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres, VOD and streaming services including the rebooted “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” the fourth film in “Ghostbusters” franchise, the inspirational new Will Smith movie “King Richard,” Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Power of the Dog” and the Alanis Morissette documentary “Jagged,” now streaming on Crave.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard joins NewsTalk 1010 guest host David Cooper on the coast-to-coast-to-coast late night “Showgram” to play the game “Did Richard Crouse like these movies?” This week we talk about “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” the fourth film in “Ghostbusters” franchise, the new Will Smith movie “King Richard” and Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Power of the Dog.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“The Power of the Dog,” now playing in theatres before making the move to Netflix, is a story of self-loathing that is equal parts straightforward and exasperating. Much like its main character Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), the movie has moments of interest but is ultimately frustrating.
The film begins in mid-1920s Montana. The Burbank brothers, Phil (Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons), are wealthy ranchers and polar opposites. The only thing they seem to have in common is a reverence for their mentor, the deceased rancher Bronco Henry.
Phil, we learn, studied the classics at Yale, but prefers to live a basic life. He likes the company of horses and the ranch hands, rarely bathes and is quick with a cruel remark.
George is a gentleman rancher. He wears suits, topped with a bowler hat, throws dinner parties at the family home and falls in love with Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst), a widowed restaurant owner with a gay son named Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who wants to study medicine like his late father. Although he says he’s happy not to be alone, George takes Rose for granted and she turns to the bottle.
Rose’s presence brings out the worst in Phil who takes every opportunity to belittle his brother’s new wife, and catcall her son. Peter is a quiet presence on the ranch during his school break, but as time goes on, it is clear he sees himself as his mother’s protector. “When my father passed, I wanted nothing more than my mother’s happiness,” Peter says. “For what kind of man would I be if I did not help my mother? If I did not save her?”
“The Power of the Dog” isn’t so much driven by its narrative as it is by the characters and an intense central performance.
As Phil, Cumberbatch is an enigma. An unwashed and gravelly-voiced bully, his guard is constantly up. Cumberbatch and director Jane Campion slowly reveal bits of Phil’s backstory through subtle references and scenes. We never get a full picture, and fear of revealing spoilers prevents me from elaborating, but it appears the character’s self-loathing and fragile masculinity seem to drive his vile behaviors. Cumberbatch maintains the mystery of the character, while allowing the odd slip of vulnerability appear, even if it sometimes feels as if he’s playing a studied caricature of a cowboy.
Campion delivers the material in a slow burn. Tensions build, but the level of repression on screen prevents total engagement with the characters. By the time the end credits roll “The Power of the Dog” proves itself to be a beautifully crafted film with a handful of emotionally affecting scenes but an underwhelming overall effect.
Richard and CP24 anchor Stephanie Smythe have a look at the weekend’s new movies, the redonkulous new “Fast & Furious” entry from Vin Diesel and Company, “The Fate of the Furious,” the family drama “Gifted,” the romantic biopic “Maudie” starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke and the bizzaro “My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea”!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
“Success is counted sweetest, By those who ne’er succeed,” wrote Emily Dickenson in one of the seven poems she published during her lifetime. Those lines must have played on the minds of the filmmakers behind A Quiet Passion, a biopic of the reclusive nineteenth century poet, who suffered setback after setback while bringing the story to the screen.
Five years after being offered the role Cynthia Nixon said, “I never thought it would come together. I thought, ‘Thank you for thinking of me, it is a good part for me but I don’t see how you are going to get this made.’”
The former Sex and the City star often thought about the project but claims she was never impatient at the film’s lack of progress.
“I started acting as a twelve year old and I went to a very tough school and what that taught me was that when I was up for a job that I really wanted and I didn’t get, I would think to myself, ‘At least I don’t have to do double duty. I don’t have to do school and work.’ Now I have three children and am married. I run a household so when I am not working I feel it less than other people.
“If you are in something for the long haul you are not constantly taking its temperature.”
It took years but Nixon and director Terence Davies succeeded in telling Dickenson’s story, bringing to cinematic life not only the facts—she was reclusive and never married—but also the essence of a person with an insatiable need to question societal norms.
“The questions she is asking as a person and as a woman,” says Nixon, “they are big questions. How do I deal with all this love I feel? What does it mean to be intimate with another person? Will I lose myself and do I want to lose myself? I think she was so ahead of her time in thinking these things were an option, like whether she would marry or not. For her that was a question. It wasn’t like she was dying to get married and didn’t. She chose not to. Whether she was going to be a mother or not. These are questions that women today deal with as a matter of course but most nineteenth century women would not have even stopped to consider.”
Nixon says Dickenson’s ideas and words have been a constant in her life. “We had a record at home of Julie Harris reading some of the poems and the letters. I would listen to them again and again so some of the better-known poems and letters I learned by heart.”
Dickenson died 130 years ago but Nixon feels there are timely elements in A Quiet Passion for today’s audiences.
“If you think about the mid nineteenth century in America and you think about the issues we were dealing with in terms of women, it is a straight line from there to here. We’ve obviously come very far but it is exactly the same issues. Are women going to be treated equally? She saw the jump between the way things are supposed to be and the way things are, and she didn’t try to wallpaper over anything.”
“A Quiet Passion” avoids the two major pitfalls of most poetry movies, it neither seeks to ponder the creative process or glamourize the poet’s excesses and rakish behaviour. Instead, this is a modest movie that focuses on Emily Dickenson’s reclusive existence; giving us insight into the personality published just seven poems in her lifetime.
Set in nineteenth century Amherst, Massachusetts, at the start Emma Bell plays Dickenson as an unconventional young woman who leaves her women’s college because she, “will not be forced to piety.” Later “Sex and the City’s” Cynthia Nixon takes over the role as the poet matures into a fiercely opinionated and vivacious woman who lives with her father (Keith Carradine), mother (Joanna Bacon), brother (Duncan Duff) and sister (Jennifer Ehle). Unlike most dour representations of Dickenson, Nixon plays her as an intense, intuitive person bursting at the seams with ideas. Despite the strict morays of the time—she had to ask her father for permission to write—she would stay in that tightly knit family unit her entire life, soaking up the inspiration that fed the nearly 2000 poems she wrote but (mostly) never published. Writing poetry by hurricane lamp, calling it, “my solace for the eternity that surrounds us all,” she pours a life ripe with bereavement and disappointment onto the pages.
There’s not a lot of action in “A Quiet Passion.” It is primarily housebound, as Emily withdraws from the outside world, surrounding herself with those she knows and trusts best. It is, I suppose, a good way to visualize her growing sense of societal alienation but it makes for a film that often feels closed in, claustrophobic.
Luckily there is nothing stodgy about the performances. Nixon leads the cast, breathing life into a character who retreated from the world, expressing her joy and pain in the written word. She makes the mannered dialogue seem natural, bringing an ease to the conversation and societal structures. It’s a lovely performance, one that transcends the film’s archness and artifice.
There is poetry in “A Quiet Passion.” Perhaps not enough of actual poetry for Dickenson purists—it’s mostly heard in voiceover—but a cinematic poetry from director Terence Davies who has visualized one woman’s intimate connection with words.
