On this edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet Quebec ultramarathon runner Joan Roch who is preparing for a nearly 8,000-kilometre run from the most southern point of the United States to Quebec’s Gaspé peninsula.
Then, Oscar winner Laura Dern joins me to talk about her latest film “The Son,” which is in theatres now. In it, she plays Kate, ex-wife of the Hugh Jackman character and the mother of a young man experiencing extreme depression.
We’ll also get to know Andrea Constand. Of the more than 60 women who publicly accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault, she is the only one to get a conviction. She joins me to talk about her pursuit for justice and healing and a new docu-series called “The Case Against Cosby.”
Finally, we get to meet Lou Lou la Duchesse de Riere, an Indigenous burlesque performer from Quebec who was named No. 2 in the world by 21st Century Burlesque Magazine.
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!
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“The Son,” director Florian Zeller’s follow-up to the Oscar winning “The Father,” is the story of a fractured family and a son struggling with mental illness.
The drama, adapted for the screen by Christopher Hampton from Zeller’s stage play, involves Peter (Hugh Jackman), a high-flying New York City lawyer with political aspirations. He is the father of 17-year-old Nicholas (Zen McGrath) and ex-husband of Kate (Laura Dern), but has rebooted his life, marrying Beth (Vanessa Kirby), a much younger woman who is the mother to their baby, Theo. Peter has a new baby and a new life that doesn’t leave much room for his older son.
When Nicolas begins skipping school, acting out and cutting himself as a way to channel his pain, Kate asks if Peter can step up and give the boy some guidance and a place to stay. “He needs you Peter,” she says. “You can’t abandon him.”
Life is weighing Nicholas down. “I can’t deal with any of it,” he says. “I want something to change, but I don’t know what.”
With Nicolas in the spare room, Peter attempts to “fix” him, searching for an explanation for his son’s behavior, trying to be a better father to the teen than his own father, played by Anthony Hopkins, was to him. An unapologetically bad father, Hopkins snarls, “Your daddy wasn’t good to you or your mama. Who cares? Get over it.”
“The Son” is the story of intergenerational trauma, of the sins of a father (Hopkins is despicable in a fiery cameo) being visited upon his son and grandson, and a child’s cry for help.
Compassion abounds in “The Son,” and Jackman astounds wit work that is tinged with vulnerability, tragedy and guilt, but the script offers few surprises. Zeller telegraphs the film’s biggest moments, as if he doesn’t trust the audience to follow along. Those early revelations mute the story’s emotional power, despite the fine, compassionate performances.
There are compelling moments in “The Son.” A showdown between Peter and Nicholas packs emotional heft, and Jackman’s struggle to understand his son’s acute depression is tempered with equal parts empathy and frustration.
Jackman delivers a remarkable and authentic portrait of a desperate father in a well-intentioned film, that, by and large, feels manipulative by comparison.
“Bigger,” says Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in the trailer for “Jurassic World Dominion.” “Why do they always have to be bigger?”
It’s a legit question. The good doctor is, of course, referring to the dinosaurs that, once again, are causing problems in our modern world.
But the question might also apply to the movie itself.
The follow-up to “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” and the sixth and final film in the franchise, is bigger and louder than the movies that came before it, but as a viewer you may ask yourself, “Why?”
Set four years after Jurassic Park was destroyed by an erupting volcano, “Jurassic World Dominion” begins with dinosaurs let loose worldwide, living among humans.
Dino whisperer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and girlfriend, founder of the Dinosaur Protection Group Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), are in hiding, protecting Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon). As a teenage clone of Jurassic Park co-founder Benjamin Lockwood’s daughter, her DNA is of great interest to Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), the villainous CEO of Biosyn. When she is kidnapped, Owen and Claire give chase.
At the same time, locusts with prehistoric DNA devastate the globe’s grain supply, prompting paleobotanists Ellie Sadler (Laura Dern) and Alan Grant (Sam Neill) to launch an investigation. Their search for answers leads them to Biosyn and a familiar face, chaos theory mathematician Ian Malcolm (Goldblum).
The dinosaurs and the story may be bigger than the last time round, but remember, bigger is not always better. The original “Jurassic” franchise worked because if a streamlined simplicity to the storytelling mixed with masterful execution. Oh, and lots of dinosaurs.
“Jurassic World Dominion” has lots of dinosaurs and some fan service but misses the mark otherwise. It is a talky dino-bore with none of the suspense that made “Jurassic Park” edge of your seat stuff. The action scenes are murky and few-and-far-between, there’s lots of dodgy CGI and unlike the reconstituted dinosaurs, it feels lifeless. Luckily Goldblum reappears after a quick cameo off the top to shake things up with his trademarked droll wit in the third act.
Near the beginning of the film Dern’s character Ellie sees a small dinosaur and coos, “this never gets old.” She clearly hasn’t seen “Jurassic World Dominion.”
As Chief Official White House Photographer for two US Presidents, Pete Souza had an up-close-and-personal look at the hallways of power and the men who walked them. “The Way I See It,” a new documentary now on VOD, captures a detailed behind-the-scenes profile of power and the responsibility that comes along with the office.
Souza’s photography career began in the 1970s at local news outlets before he made the leap to working for major outlets like the Chicago Sun-Times, National Geographic Magazine and Life Magazine. In June 1983 he became the official White House photographer for President Ronald Reagan, capturing intimate portraits of the President and wife Nancy in and out of the Oval Office for the next six years.
A stint as photojournalist for the Chicago Tribune Washington, D.C., bureau followed and in 2001 he was in the first wave of journalists to cover the war in Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul.
In 2004 Souza covered Barack Obama’s first year as U.S. senator and then, after the 2008 election, he began a project “to create the best photographic archive of a president that had ever been done.” In his second stint as official White House photographer he spent thousands of hours alongside President Obama and family, creating an archive of revealing, personal photographs that form the backbone of the first half of “The Way I See It.”
Using archival footage, hundreds of Souza’s pictures, talking head interviews with people like former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes and former US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and snippets of Souza at a live speaking engagement, director and producer Dawn Porter follows the photographer’s career in the White House and beyond. These reveal Soouza to be an engaging character, laughing at his own jokes and welling up when he speaks of Obama’s tender treatment of the parents of the Sandy Hook victims.
In civilian life Souza has become an unlikely social media star, earning the nickname King of Shade for the snarky captions he uses to reply to Trump tweets. It’s made the formally apolitical photographer a social star and inspired a book called “Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents” that collects juxtaposes Souza’s Obama pictures against what he sees as the abuses of power and negative policies of the current administration.
“The Way I See It” is Souza’s story but the larger picture it paints is one of the importance of photography. If a picture is worth a thousand words this movie speaks volumes. Souza’s photos capture the hope and empathy that characterized the Obama years in stark contrast to the anxiety that surrounds the current election season. The photos tell the tale, for now and posterity.
Director Greta Gerwig keeps the bones of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” in the new big screen treatment of the 19th century story, but reshapes the March sisters’ coming-of-age in fresh and exciting ways.
Set at the time of the Civil War, the eighth film adaptation of the tale sees the March’s, debutant Meg (Emma Watson), strong willed Jo (Saoirse Ronan), sickly and sweet Beth (Eliza Scanlen) and self-centerd Amy (Florence Pugh), with mother Marmee (Laura Dern), living a threadbare existence. The war has stripped them of whatever money they once had but they remain committed to charity—helping a destitute family down the road—and one another as they wait for the return of their father (Bob Odenkirk) from the battlefield.
As the story jumps through time their lives intersect with Theodore ‘Laurie’ Laurence (Timothée Chalamet), a charming, wealthy lay-about neighbor who has designs on Jo, his millionaire uncle (Chris Cooper), acid-tongued Aunt March (Meryl Streep) and Mr. Dashwood, the terse-talking newspaper publisher.
Told on a broken timeline, “Little Women” forgoes the linear structure of the novel to jump back-and-forth in time. It’s a clever device that takes some getting used to—at first it’s not immediately obvious the story is skipping around like a flat rock skimming across a lake—but ultimately it provides insightful perspective on the characters and why they make the decisions they do. Gerwig has fiddled with the story’s collision of feminism, romance and family dynamics just enough to amplify its resonance for a modern audience. Playing around with a well loved and well-worn classic is risky, but Gerwig pulls it off with panache, aided by an extraordinary cast who bring the material to vivid life.
As a collective the cast of “Little Women” are as finely tuned as the piano Beth practices on, pitch perfect with no sour notes.
Chalamet, reteaming with Ronan and Gerwig after the success of “Lady Bird,” drips charisma as the foppish and devoted friend/love interest Laurie. He’s equal parts awkward and arrogance, putting a new spin on a character that’s been played by everyone from Peter Lawford to Christian Bale.
Streep and Letts drop in for some comic relief but it is the chemistry between the sisters that is the film’s biggest success. Previous adaptations have tilted in Jo’s favor, giving her the most screen time and the juiciest character arc. Gerwig recalibrates, allowing each of the sisters to shine. The story still revolves around Jo’s interactions with each of the women, but here each of them push the story forward. Watson beings kindness and empathy to Meg. In Scanlen’s hands Beth is sweetly realistic about her lot in life. Ronan and Pugh leave the largest impression, imprinting the tale with their steeliness, humor and humanity.
“Little Women” is a rarity. It’s an adaptation of an often told tale that manages a rethink while still holding true to what made the source material so beloved.
“Marriage Story” is not a first date movie. It is a three hankie, emotionally fraught movie about appealing but damaged people whose divorce is filled with a sense of loss and a growing shroud of incivility.
Adam Driver is Charlie, a hotshot avant-garde theatre director living and working in Brooklyn, New York with his wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson). She is a former movie star with a list of teen comedies to her credit. They met at a party, instantly fell in love, had son Henry (Azhy Robertson) all was well until it wasn’t. Charlie may have slept with a stage manager but it’s Nicole’s growing dissatisfaction that widen the chasm between them. “I never really came alive for myself,” she says. “I was only feeding his aliveness.”
What begins as a simple conscious uncoupling becomes complicated when Nicole accepts a starring role on a television series based in Los Angeles, taking Henry to live with her. The family, stretched between two coasts and two careers, wears thin and soon the pressures of the split take their toll. “It’s not as simple as not being in love anymore,” says Nicole.
On my way into the press screening for “Marriage Story” a publicist handed me a small package of Kleenex branded with the movie’s logo. “I won’t need these,” I thought. “I’m a professional, here to dispassionately judge this film on its merits. I made it through ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ like a dry-eyed superman and if I can do that, I can do anything.” I’m not too proud to tell you that I was glad I had the Kleenexes. “Marriage Story” is so agonizingly vivid, so without melodrama, that I felt at times as though I was a voyeur, that I shouldn’t be watching some of these emotionally charged scenes. As Charlie and Nicole drift apart and lawyers, like the ruthless Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern in full beast mode), become involved the idea that they might have a chance of staying friends once this is all said and done becomes heartbreakingly remote.
Driver and Johansson convincingly play the bond that made them a couple and as it unravels both reveal the fatal flaws that drove a wedge between them. The two actors, unshackled from the constraints of the blockbusters that pay for their Italian castle retreats, dig deep, wallowing in their character’s self-absorption and anger.
Johansson, in full monologue mode, thrills in a lengthy speech detailing her state of mind. And do not even get me started by Driver’s final scene with his son as he reads a long-forgotten note. (NO SPOILERS HERE) Director Noah Baumbach keeps those scenes—and the entire movie for that matter—uncluttered. Simple and direct, he allows the actors to do the heavy lifting with naturalistic performances and both pack a wallop.
“Marriage Story” may not be a great choice for a first date but the emotional, sincere truth Baumbach and cast wring out of the material is best seen with a companion, or at the very least a package of Kleenex.
Another Liam Neeson action movie, another father on the rampage. But “Cold Pursuit,” an English language remake of the Norwegian film “Kraftidioten,” is no “Taken.” There are special skills, piles of dead bodies and the story is as far fetched as Neeson’s deliberately trashy kidnap movies but the new film has something else, a dark sense of humour.
In the film’s early moments we see Colorado snowplough driver Nels Coxman (Liam Neeson) honoured as Citizen of the Year for his efforts in keeping the roads clear and the townsfolk of his small community safe. On the heels of this civic honour comes the worst news of Coxman’s life, the death of his son by heroin overdose. Nels and his wife (an underused Laura Dern) are in disbelief. Refusing to believe their son was a drug addict Nels starts asking questions that lead him to a criminal network run by Trevor Calcot a.k.a. Viking (Tom Bateman), a second-generation drug lord with a hair trigger temper.
Seeking revenge, Nels changes from mild mannered snowplough driver to lean, mean killing machine. He stops ploughing snow and starts ploughing bad guys, making quick work of the Viking’s underlings—each eulogized in a title card that probably would have been more effective had the film stayed with the original translated name “In Order of Disappearance.” With several low level baddies dispatched he gets snowed in when he takes aim at the Viking himself.
The carnage continues, in part due to Nels’s brother (William Forsythe) and former gangster and an unintended drug war between the Viking and power First Nations trafficker White Bull (Tom Jackson).
“Cold Pursuit” is a faithful remake of the Norwegian film, keeping the slow burn of the original and the dark humour. It’s not slap-your-knee funny but it certainly has a lighter tone than you’d expect from a revenge drama. Neeson isn’t known for his comedy chops but his resourcefulness with a snowplough as weapon is ridiculous enough to raise a smile or two. It doesn’t feel fresh—the spectre of Tarantino hangs heavy over the proceedings, with title cards, surf music and a casual attitude to the violence—but the icy atmosphere juxtaposed with the hot-blooded thirst for vengeance makes for a diverting enough crime story.
One of the most famous quotes from the “Star Wars” saga must haunt the dreams of every director who signs on to make one of these continuing stories. “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” The “Star Wars” films aren’t simply a night out at the movies, they are part of the fabric of many people’s lives. Some take it VERY seriously. On a 2001 census 21,000 Canadians put down their religion as Jedi Knight. That is serious fandom.
Finding a balance between the nostalgia many aficionados hold for the iconic series and moving it forward in an entertaining and organic way is a juggling act, one that director Rian Johnson has pulled off in “Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi.”
Tried he did. Fail he did not.
Johnson, who has already been hired to pilot a new three-film “Star Wars” franchise, pushes the characters and the story into new territory while maintaining the gist of George Lucas’s vision.
Beginning immediately after the events of “The Force Awakens,” Force-sensitive Resistance fighter Rey (Daisy Ridley) is in the most “unknowable place in the galaxy,” the planet Ahch-To, home to the exiled Jedi Master (and Mister Miyagi stand in) Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). As she tries to convince him to train her in the ways of the Jedi, General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) and her Resistance do battle with the First Order, lead by the evil Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) and his minions, General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Vader-wannabe Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).
Like the other films “The Last Jedi” is basically a tale of good versus evil. Snoke wants control of the galaxy while the Resistance is exposed and fighting back. It’s an echo of the original story but our real world has become a more complicated place since the first movie hit theatres and this movie reflects that. There have always been grey areas and nuance in the portrayal of heroes and villains in the franchise but here Kylo wrestles with primal urges. His leader Snokes, eggs him on—“Kylo you are no Vader,” he taunts. “You are just a child in a mask.”—as he battles with the yin and yang of his personality. That to and fro gives Driver the latitude to surprise the audience in ways (NO SPOILERS HERE!) that may shock even the most hardened fans.
Johnson has not simply remade “Empire Strikes Back,” he’s made a film that bristles with energy and invention. With one eye on the past and one to the future “The Last Jedi” finds a winning mix of humour and humanity, of old and new and good and evil.
When the talk of resistance and legacy of the Jedi threatens to weigh things down Johnson counters with some comic relief. It’s a treat to see Carrie Fisher in her last turn as Leia—the film is dedicated to her: “In loving memory of our Princess Carrie Fisher”—and Hamill with light sabre in hand but it’s the spirit of the thing that will please audiences. Although a tad long, “The Last Jedi” is a giddy, gripping good time.
On this edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet Quebec ultramarathon runner Joan Roch who is preparing for a nearly 8,000-kilometre run from the most southern point of the United States to Quebec’s Gaspé peninsula.
