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 “Darkest Hour, “The Shape of Water” and “Wonder Wheel.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies including “Darkest Hour, “The Shape of Water” and “Wonder Wheel.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the Winston Churchill biopic “Darkest Hour, “The Shape of Water,” a movie Richard says “is the kind of movie that made me fall in love with movies in the first place,” and the not-so-wondrous “Wonder Wheel.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
Winston Churchill, born 143 years ago, is suddenly hot again.
“When I started work on this movie in 2016 the only Churchill I had in mind was Albert Finney’s A Gathering Storm which was brilliant,” says Darkest Hour director Joe Wright. “It had been made more than a decade ago. We weren’t aware of the Brian Cox movie, we weren’t aware of Dunkirk, The Crown hadn’t come on yet. It didn’t feel topical at all. Then suddenly the events of 2016 happened and this wave of topicality came and overcame the film.”
The fireworks in Darkest Hour begin in May 1940. It’s less than a year into the Second World War and Winston Churchill, played by Gary Oldman, is made prime minister after Neville Chamberlain lost the confidence of parliament.
He’s an unconventional choice. His own party thinks of him as a drunkard — it is said that between 1908 and 1965, he partook in 42,000 bottles of his favourite champagne Pol Roget — and members of his war cabinet favour negotiation with the Nazis over resistance and war. The so-called English Bulldog battles them and nagging self-doubt as he stays steadfast in his determination to fight the Nazis while finding an exit strategy for 300,000 British troops stranded at Dunkirk.
Wright likens Churchill’s crusade against Hitler to the resistance that has sprung up around the world in reaction to various far-right groups.
“Churchill got a lot of things wrong in his life,” Wright says, “but in this particular instance, in this context, with this enemy, he understood the perils totalitarianism and Nazism and bigotry and hate and he resisted. I think we are living in a society now that would not be the same if not for his resistance. I think that is really important to remember to fight back. To look outside of our important domestic concerns and look at our global domestic concerns.”
Darkest Hour is a historical drama with all the trappings of Masterpiece Theatre. Expect sumptuous photography, costumes and period details. What you may not expect is the light-hearted tone of much of the goings on. When Churchill becomes prime minister, his wife makes an impassioned speech about the importance of his work. He raises a glass and, cutting through the emotion of the moment, says, “Here’s to not buggering it up!” It shows a side of Churchill not often revealed in wartime biopics.
When I tell Wright I found the movie funnier than expected, he laughs. “Especially when it is called Darkest Hour.”
“I think Churchill was a very funny individual. Anyone you read who was with him, from his secretaries to his bodyguards to the politicians who were working with him, all talk about his humour. It was one of his overriding characteristics. We wanted to make sure it didn’t turn into Carry on Churchill so there were gags in there we cut.
“I think, like all of us, it was kind of a coping mechanism. The reason sex and death seem to be the main sources of humour is that they help us deal with things that might otherwise cause us anxiety. “
Wright adds that as the battle against totalitarianism unfolds the film becomes more serious. “His foe was probably the most terrifying adversary we had ever encountered, so the stakes were very high.”
”Atonement” director Joe Wright’s new film is a spirited—and funnier than you’d imagine—retelling of the machinations behind World War II’s Operation Dynamo. In a tour de force performance, “Darkest Hours” stars Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in a movie that would make a great double bill with Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk.”
The fireworks begin on May 9, 1940. It’s less than a year into the war and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) has lost the confidence of parliament. His handling of the Nazi threat brought Britain into the war and, as a result, in poor health, he is forced to resign. On May 10 Winston Churchill is made Prime Minister.
He’s not exactly a man of the people. “I’ve never been on a bus,” he wheezes. “I’ve never cute for bread. I believe I can boil and egg but only because I’ve seen it done.”
He’s an unconventional choice. His own party thinks of him as a drunkard—it is said that between 1908 and 1965, he partook in 42,000 bottles of his favourite champagne Pol Roget—and members of his War Cabinet, who favour negotiation with the Nazis over resistance and war, begin plotting to remove him almost as soon as he takes power. “I’m getting a job because the ship is sinking,” he says. “It’s not a job. It’s revenge.”
In the coming days he battles politicians and nagging self-doubt as he stays steadfast in his determination to fight the Nazis while finding an exit strategy for 300,000 British troops at Dunkirk. “Nations that go down fighting rise again,” he says.
“Darkest Hours” is a historical drama with all the trappings of “Masterpiece Theatre.” You can expect photography, costumes and period details are sumptuous. What you may not expect is the light-hearted tone of much of the goings on. While this isn’t “Carry On Churchill,” it has a lighter touch that might be expected. Oldman, not an actor known for his comedic flourishes, embraces the sly humour. When Churchill becomes Prime Minister his wife, Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas) makes an impassioned speech about the importance of the work he is about to take on. He raises a glass and, cutting through the emotion of the moment, says, “Here’s to not buggering it up!” It shows a side of Churchill not often revealed in wartime biopics.
We also see the great man in quiet moments with Clementine, the source of much of his strength. The way he is a cowed by his wife when she’s called him out for not being kind to his new secretary (Lily James)—”I want others to love and respect you the way I do.”—reveal his vulnerabilities and tenderness.
Of course the film also showcases Churchill as a tactician, an orator—“He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle,” says Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane) after one fiery speech—and a single-minded leader who came to embody the very spirit of English defiance in the face of threats from Germany.
At the heart of the movie, and on almost every frame of film, is Oldman who hits a career high. Underneath layers of makeup and with a cigar wedged in his face, he brings history to life in a performance that goes far past impersonation. The role is a study in resistance and leadership and is sure to earn Oldman an Oscar nomination.
“Darkest Hour” director Wright brings his trademarked visual flair. During Churchill’s first BBC speech to the nation, for instance, an overhead shot of the bombing in France turns into the face of one of Hitler’s nameless victims but the movie succeeds because Oldman breathes new life into a historical figure we thought we already knew.
The last time Kevin Kline journeyed to France on film, he played a French jewel thief who duped Meg Ryan into committing a crime in “French Kiss.” In “My Old Lady” he’s back in the City of Light but this time around he’s a desperate, down-on-his luck New Yorker who inherits an apartment from his late father, only to find it comes with strings.
Kline is Mathias Gold who travels to Paris in the hope of selling his estranged father’s huge and valuable apartment. He’s broke and has three ex-wives to go along with the three novels he wrote and never published. When he arrives his lack of proficiency in French isn’t his only problem. An elderly English woman, Mathilde Girard (Maggie Smith) lives in the apartment with her daughter Chloé (Kristin Scott Thomas). The apartment is a “viager,” and according to French real estate laws, because Mathilde has possession of the place Gold must pay her a “rent” of 2400 euros a month until she dies. If he defaults, she keeps the flat. “I own this apartment and I also own you,” he says. As tensions run high the old lady makes a startling revelation. “Your father and I were lovers since I was twenty-nine,” she says. “If you want to know for whom you are named, you are named for me. I am Mathilde, you are Mathias.”
“My Old Lady” is the kind of film that is enhanced by its performances. What begins as a fish out of water story about real estate and desperation slowly becomes a character study. It’s very theatrical, which makes sense given playwright-turned-film-director Israel Horowitz’s background, but the stage-bound feel doesn’t take away from the rawness of the emotions or the snappiness of the dialogue. By turns comedic, by turns tragic, “My Old Lady’s” carefully crafted acting earns it a recommend.
There is no shortage of John Lennon on celluloid. There are five official Beatles movies, documentaries like “The U.S. vs. John Lennon,” a 2006 movie that focuses on Lennon’s transformation from musician into antiwar activist, and even experimental short films like the John and Yoko shorts like “Two Virgins” and “Apotheosis.” He’s been portrayed by everyone from Paul Rudd (in “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”) to Monty Python’s Eric Idle but rarely has any actor captured both Lennon’s rebelliousness and vulnerability as Aaron Johnson does in “Nowhere Boy.”
The coming-of-age-story of one of the most famous people of the twentieth century, “Nowhere Boy” examines Lennon’s relationship with his estranged mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff) and his Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas), the woman who raised him. For the first time on film we see the effect the combustible combination of women had on his life. His mother’s ready! steady! go! lifestyle helping to form his rock ‘n’ roll side, while Aunt Mimi’s more slow and steady influence brought out John’s sensitive, artistic side.
“Nowhere Boy” is a fascinating character study that reveals the formative years of a complicated man. Aaron Johnson, who was eighteen at the time, succeeds because he doesn’t try to imitate Lennon, instead he plays a young, confused man who is on the cusp of growing up. Sure, the distinctive Liverpool accent is there as are the right period details, but it’s what is beyond those crutches that make this performance, as they said in “Yellow Submarine,” “a tickle of joy on the belly the universe.”
First time director Sam Taylor-Wood gets the muddled mix of excitement, testosterone and disappointment Lennon felt on an almost daily basis just right, and in the process has made one of the best Beatle bios to date.
Easy Virtue, the new film from The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert director Stephan Elliott, is a comedy-of-manners loosely based on a Noël Coward play of the same name. Originally filmed as a silent movie in 1928 by Alfred Hitchcock, the new version is anything but quiet with the British members of the cast—Colin Firth, Kristin Scott Thomas and Narnia’s Ben Barnes—expertly lobbing frothy dialogue too and fro. It’s up to the lone above-the-title American star Jessica Biel, not to get lost in the crossfire.
Biel is Larita, a brash American widow who marries John Whittaker (Barnes), a wealthy Brit after a brief romance in the south of France. When John brings home his new wife, or the “gold-digger from the land of opportunists” as she is seen by his mother (Kristen Scott Thomas), a class war erupts between the spirited Larita and stiff upper lipped Whittakers.
Easy Virtue is the latest big release from Ealing Studios. For over 100 years the British studio has been synonymous with quality comedy, particularly during their 1940s and 50s heyday when they produced classics like Passport to Pimlico, Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers. Like its predecessors Easy Virtue has its virtues—it’s a quality production, elegantly directed and, for the most part, nicely acted, but a classic it’s not. I doubt it’ll ever sit on the shelf next to any of the studio’s better known titles.
It’s a hard movie to hate, but an even harder one to love. While it has its moments—the 1970s disco hit Car Wash is nicely adapted and snuck into the soundtrack as a jaunty British ragtime tune, butler Furber is played with deadpan perfection by Kris Marshall and much attention has been paid to the period sets and costumes—it’s a little too frivolous too make much of an impression.
It is worth a look to see Kristin Scott Thomas take standard mother-in-law joke of a role and bring it to vibrant, acidic life or Colin Firth bang off one-liners with the ease of drawing room comedy veteran but while I know many people who wouldn’t mind watching Jessica Biel for 90 minutes she isn’t one of the movie’s stronger elements.
In recent years Biel has worked very hard to break out of the model turned actress mold and take on increasingly challenging roles, and while Easy Virtue is a step forward toward her goal, she’s still a few feet away from the finish line. Witty lines that fall trippingly off the tongues of the Brits in the cast sound flat and clunky in Biel’s delivery and a scene with a dog, a pillow and an unfortunate accident proves that light comedy is not her forte.
Easy Virtue isn’t a terrible film, it’s just not very memorable.
Near the end of “Sarah’s Key” star Kristin Scott Thomas says, “When a story is told, it is not forgotten.” The story she’s referring to is the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup, a 1942 mass arrest of Jews in Paris by the French police. To tell the tale “Sarah’s Key” jumps between past and present.
Based on Tatiana De Rosnay’s international best-seller, Scott Thomas plays Julie, an American writer in Paris working on an article about the little known incident which saw ten thousand Jews—including 10-year-old Sarah Starzynski (Mélusine Mayance) and her parents—ripped from their homes and sent to internment camps. While researching the story she finds a connection between her French in-laws and the Starzynski family.
Overlooked on its theatrical release “Sarah’s Key” is getting a well deserved second life on DVD. Although it has a tendency to dip into melodrama from time to time the movie’s story of survival and guilt is buoyed by two remarkable performances.
Scott Thomas is at the center of the movie and delivers a beautifully restrained and natural performance as a woman in an unhappy marriage but it is Mélusine Mayance as young Sarah that brings fire to the movie. Her take on a young girl who escapes from a concentration camp humanizes an unimaginable atrocity.
“Sarah’s Key” is a tearjerker that peters out in its final third, but is nonetheless a potent story of survival.
