I appear on “CTV News at 6” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the best movies and television to watch this weekend. This week I have a look at the latest mystery from Benoit Blanc, “Glass Onion” and the animated “Strange World.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 36:27)
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 the latest mystery from Benoit Blanc, “Glass Onion,” the sports drama “The Swimmers” and the animated “Strange World.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Akshay Tandon to talk about the latest mystery from Benoit Blanc, “Glass Onion,” the sports drama “The Swimmers” and the animated “Strange World.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Tim Denis to discuss the weekend’s flickers including the latest mystery from Benoit Blanc, “Glass Onion,” the sports drama “The Swimmers” and the animated “Strange World.”
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 the latest mystery from Benoit Blanc, “Glass Onion,” the sports drama “The Swimmers” and the animated “Strange World.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” the sequel to the popular Daniel Craig detective movie “Knives Out, now playing in theatres before moving to Netflix in late December, is a satire of old school Agatha Christie with a modern sensibility.
Craig returns as detective Benoit Blanc, “The Last of the Gentlemen Sleuths.” He’s the American Poirot, with a honied Southern accent and a Jessica Fletcher-esque knack for being present when people are murdered.
In the new film he finds himself, post COVID lockdown, at a lavish private estate on a Greek island owned by billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton doing Elon Musk). Invited by a mysterious third party, it is just the tonic he needs to shake his post COVID lockdown blues.
“I lose it between cases,” he drawls. “I may be going insane. My brain is a fuelled up sportscar, with nowhere to go. I need a great case.”
Bron has invited “my dear disrupters, my closest inner circle,” like former business partner Andi Brand (Janelle Monáe), scientist Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom Jr.), man’s rights YouTube star Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), fashion designer and unapologetic loudmouth Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson) and politician Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn) among other glamourous types, to play a very special game.
“I’ve invited you all to my island,” says Bron, “because tonight, a murder will be committed. My murder.”
With clues hidden all over the island, Bron encourages his guests to “closely observe each other. If anyone can name the killer, that person wins our game.”
It’s all fun and games until a real dead body shows up and everyone on the island is a suspect in the crime.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” says Blanc. “You expected a mystery. You expected a puzzle. But for at least one person on this island, this is not a game.”
Cue the whodunnit. The characters are all connected, and all have a motive for murder. “This is a case that has confounded me like no other,” Blanc says as he peels back the layers of the mystery.
There is a lot of talk of disrupters in “Glass Onion.” Each of the guests have caused radical change in their industries, a fact pointed out by Bron as the reason they are all friends. It also applies to writer/director Rian Johnson. He pays homage to a well-worn format, the Agatha Christie ensemble cast and elaborate crime reveal, but breathes new life into the tried-and-true format, updating and disrupting the structure.
Johnson uses all the same stylistic—flourishes, flashbacks, red herrings and diversionary tactics—as Christie did, in books and on screen, but adds a spark, juggling the story’s twists, turns and reveals with great aplomb and humour. The result is a swiftly paced thriller that is equal parts silly and suave.
It’s become trendy to skewer the rich and ridiculous in film. Recent movies like “Triangle of Sadness” and “The Menu” lay waste to entitlement and privilege, and “Glass Onion” is no different. Bron and his crew of influencers and desperadoes are presented as self-serving, uncaring and absurd—“What is reality?” shrieks Birdie Jay when the going gets rough—providing a juicy blast of raucous moral ambiguity as an undercurrent to the murder mystery.
As a sequel that improves on the original, “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” is a rarity. It may follow a template formatted by Agatha Christie, but like the titular “Glass Onion” itself, Johnson is transparent in his desire to make the mystery deeper, the characters more extreme and the thrills more thrilling. As Blanc says in the in the film, “This is truly delightful.”
Richard joins NewsTalk 1010 host Jim Richards 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 to talk about the much anticipated “Sopranos” prequel “The Many Saints of Newark,” the latest adventures of the Gomez, Morticia and Company in the animated “The Addams Family 2” and the Jake Gyllenhaal thriller “The Guilty.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“The Many Saints of Newark,” the sprawling big-screen prequel to the iconic television series “The Sopranos,” feels more like a pilot for a new show than the origin story of one of television’s most famous families.
Broken into three parts, “The Many Saints of Newark,” uses narration, courtesy of Tony Soprano’s late associate Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli), to break down the movie’s interconnected story shards.
Firstly, there is Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), Soprano Family soldier, father of Christopher, cousin to Carmela Soprano, uncle to Tony. He’s hooked up, wily and impulsive but also treacherous. When his father, the slick sociopath ‘Hollywood Dick’ (Ray Liotta), returns from Italy with a new bride (Michela De Rossi), it triggers chaos in the Moltisanti family.
In Dickie’s orbit is Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.), an African-American numbers runner for the Mob, galvanized by the 1967 Newark race riots to go out on his own and, finally, Tony Soprano, played by William Ludwig as a youngster, Michael Gandolfini, the late James Gandolfini’s son, as a teenager. As Dickie’s thirst for power spins out of control, he becomes a surrogate father to Tony, hoping to pass along something good to the impressionable younger man as a way to atone for his sins.
“The Many Saints of Newark” is vivid in its portrayal of the period. Covering roughly four years, from 1967 to 1971, it uses the turmoil of that time in American life as a backdrop for the explosive nature of Dickie’s world. That atmosphere of uncertainty makes up for a story that, despite some glorious moments, often feels rushed as it careens toward an ending that doesn’t mine the rich psychological landscape of these characters, which is what we expect from David Chase and “The Sopranos.”
The actors are game.
Nivola brings equal parts charisma, danger and depth to a flawed character who is the ringmaster to the action. Unlike many of the other characters, like the conniving Junior Soprano (Corey Stoll), henchman Paulie Walnuts (Blly Magnussen) or consigliere Silvio Dante (John Magaro), who come with eighty-six episodes of baggage, Dickie is new and can be viewed through fresh eyes.
Michael Gandolfini takes on the Herculean task of revisiting a character his father made one of the most famous in television history and brings it home by showcasing the character’s volatility and, more importantly, his vulnerability. He’s a troubled kid, on the edge of turning one way or the other, and even though we know how the story goes, Gandolfini’s performance suggests there is more to know about Tony Soprano.
If there is a complaint, it’s that both Tony and McBrayer, two of the main cogs that keep this engine running, get lost in “The Many Saints of Newark’s” elaborate plotting. Ditto for the female characters. Despite tremendous work from Vera Farmiga as Tony’s poisonous mother Livia and De Rossi as Dickie’s step-mom, the women often feel peripheral to the tale, in service only to the men’s stories.
“The Many Saints of Newark” brings with it high expectations but falls short of coming close to the greatness of its source material. “The Sopranos” broke new ground, changing the way gangster stories (and all sorts of other stories) were told on television. “The Many Saints of Newark” settles for less as an exercise in nostalgia.
Richard speaks to “CTV News at Six” anchor Andria Case about the best movies to watch this weekend including the inspired-by-true-events drama “One Night In Miami” (Amazon Prime Video), the Netflix action flick “Outside the Wire” (Netflix) and the young adult drama “Words On Bathroom Walls” (EST, VOD, DVD, Blu-ray).
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 38:10)
