I join NewsTalk 1010 host Jim Richards on the coast-to-coast-to-coast late night “NewsTalk Tonight” to play the game “Did Richard Crouse Like This?” This week we talk about Tom Hanks in “A Man Called Otto,” the Gerard Butler action film “Plane” and the gritty noir “Door Mouse.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I joined CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres. Today we talk about Tom Hanks in “A Man Called Otto,” the Gerard Butler action film “Plane” and the gritty noir “Door Mouse.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with CKTB morning show guest host Steph Vivier to have a look at Tom Hanks in “A Man Called Otto,” the Gerard Butler action film “Plane” and the gritty noir “Door Mouse.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join 1290 CJBK in London and hosts Ken and Marina to talk the new movies coming to theatres including grumpy old man Tom Hanks in “A Man Called Otto,” the Gerard Butler action film “Plane” and the gritty noir “Door Mouse.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including grumpy old man Tom Hanks in “A Man Called Otto,” the Gerard Butler action film “Plane” and the gritty noir “Door Mouse.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to buy a lotto ticket! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about grumpy old man Tom Hanks in “A Man Called Otto,” the Gerard Butler action film “Plane” and the gritty noir “Door Mouse.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Echoes of 1980s indie film noir run deep throughout “Door Mouse,” a new, gritty mystery thriller starring Vancouver’s Hayley Law as a burlesque performer on a quest for justice.
Law is Mouse, a chain-smoking, part time comic book creator and full-time dancer at a seedy burlesque club run by the tough-as-nails Mama (Famke Janssen).
When some of her friends and fellow dancers go missing, one snatched from her home, another abducted, pushed into a limo never to be seen again, the police are apathetic, unable or unwilling to investigate the disappearance of “girls no one will miss.”
Looking for answers. Mouse recruits her friend Ugly (Keith Powers) to delve into the dark, sordid world of drug dealers, kidnapping and sex trafficking, where vulnerable women are sold to “rich and powerful monsters.”
“These are dangerous questions you’re asking Mouse,” warns a sleazy club owner. “If you don’t want to crash, stay in your lane.”
“Door Mouse” has style to burn. Actor-turned-director Avan Jogia wrings every dime out of his low budget, utilizing eye-catching camera angles, animation and an abrasive “wake ‘em up” soundtrack and music cues to create a film with comic book noir aesthetics, that owes a debt to 80s noirs like “Blood Simple” and cult hits like “Repo Man.”
The high style suits the story’s underworld backdrop, creating an uneasy atmosphere for Jogia’s morality play.
Populated by uneasy and often corrupt characters, “Door Mouse” boils down to a simple story of good vs. evil, of predators vs. prey. Jogia, who also wrote the script, belabors the point with dialogue that is often as melodramatic as the film is stylish. Lines like “You can only crawl on the ground so long before the dirt starts sticking to you,” sound ripped from an over-written soap opera script. Imagine the relish that Susan Lucci could have applied to those words. In this context, however, those dialogue flourishes feel unnecessarily theatrical.
“Door Mouse’s” stylized look at power dynamics, filtered through a genre lens, is compelling to a point, but bludgeons its central point, that its better to die with the sheep than eat sheep with the wolves, to the point of redundancy.
Richard joins CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including Tom Holland’s PTSD drama “Cherry” (Apple TV+), the hoop dreams of “Boogie” (in theatres), the touching family drama of “Jump, Darling” (Apple, Google Play, and VOD) featuring Cloris Leachman in her last leading role and the dreamy thrills of “Come True” (VOD).
Watch the whole thing HERE!
In “Come Away,” now on VOD, Julia Sarah Stone plays Sarah, a young woman with a sleeping problem. A teen runaway, she splits her time between crashing at her friend Zoe (Tedra Rogers) and sleeping in the park. No matter where she lays her head she never gets enough sleep. Terrible nightmares keep her awake, leaving her on the brink of exhaustion all the time. No amount of coffee can keep her eyes open, and she’s even started dozing off in class, earning jeers from her classmates.
Tired of waking up tired, she signs on for a month-long university sleep experiment. Not only will it provide a comfortable place to sleep every night but she’ll also make some money acting as a guinea pig for a team of graduate students, including Jeremy (Landon Liboiron) and the mysterious Dr. Meyer (Christopher Heatherington). Outfitted with futuristic looking head gear, she settles in each night and at first she feels more rested than before. But as the experiment goes on the nightmares take hold, opening up a terrifying window into her psyche as she begins to wonder what the point of the science project actually is. “I think your science project is f***ing me up,” she says.
If you are someone whose worst nightmare is waking up next to someone who says, “I had the weirdest dream last night,” and proceeds to tell you all about, “Come True” might not be your cup of Ambien. If, however, the existential horror of a mind run amok during sleep fascinates you, then seek it out.
Director Anthony Scott Burns takes an icy, voyeuristic approach to the material, staging scenes of nightmarish terror and the clinical reaction to the patient’s deepest thoughts with an aloofness that relies on atmospherics to create the film’s uneasy vibe. It is ethereally effective, particularly when coupled with Burns’ eerie composed score.
The dreamscape scares are cerebral. Imagine if David Cronenberg had directed “Nightmare on Elm Street” instead of Wes Craven and you’ll get the idea, but the film is let down by an ending that doesn’t do what came before it justice.
