This week on the Richard Crouse Show we celebrate Halloween with two of the stars of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Patricia Quinn and Nell Campbell. They both appeared in the original stage production and the movie, as castle maid Magenta and the tap-dancing Columbia respectively.
Then, we’ll spend some time with horror maestro Guillermo Del Toro, director of movies you love like Academy Award winning “The Shape of Water,” “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “The Devil’s Backbone,” “Pacific Rim” and many more. In a conversation we recorded nine years ago, we talk about why he is drawn to the horror genre, why children play such large roles in his films and much more.
Land finally, I recommend “Let Me In,” a great vampire movie you may not have seen… something fun to watch this weekend. We’ll also meet the director, Matt Reeves, who’ll talk about the movie and why we get scared when we go to the movies.
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 Ethan Hawke, director Brad Bird, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, Eric Roberts, Brian Henson, Jonathan Goldsmith a.k.a. “The most interesting man in the world,” and best selling author Linwood Barclay.
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What to watch when you’ve already watched everything Part Eight! Binge worthy, not cringe worthy recommendations from Isolation Studios in the eerily quiet downtown Toronto. Three movies to stream, rent or buy from the comfort of home isolation. Today, newsrooms, vigilantes and a twelve-year-old vampire. #Christine#HarryBrown#LetMeIn
Seventeen-year-old Chloë Grace Moretz has played a young vampire in Let Me In, a would-be superhero in Kick Ass and cinema’s most famous telekinetic, Carrie. It’s a diverse group of roles, but Moretz says she can draw a straight line from character to character.
“They’re linear,” she says, “in the sense that they’re all strong characters. A lot of them are like me, the basis of them. They all have a big mountain in front of them but they are going to climb it and fight as hard as they can. The weakest character, but also the strongest character, I’ve played is Carrie. She is two different characters in one, so diverse and so dark. There is so much to learn from her.”
In her new film If I Stay, she plays Mia, a gifted teenage cellist from a family of musicians. When a catastrophic accident throws her into a coma, she has an out-of-body experience.
The rest of the story is told from the perspective of her memories before the accident and in the present, as she observes, ghostlike, the aftermath of the car crash.
The character appealed to her because she saw some of herself in Mia.
“She’s an introvert until she plays the cello and the cello brings her alive. It’s how I am. I’m pretty shy, unless I’m speaking about my job. I’m really shy around teenagers my age. Sometimes it’s because they judge me and it kind of scares me. Crowds scare me, teenagers scare me, new people. I get really quiet and awkward.”
With that insight, she hoped to make Mia true to the character created by author Gayle Forman in the bestselling book that inspired the movie.
“My biggest thing was making her honest to the book,” she says.
“I have been a fan of book series, and then I’ll see the movie and think, ‘That was such a let-down.’ I hate that feeling because for me, I want to be able to be a fan of my own work.”
The movie is a tear jerker, but Moretz says she doesn’t like it “when people chalk up a movie to being all about crying. I like to walk out of a movie feeling like I have learned something, that something’s changed.”
After seeing If I Stay, she hopes audiences “leave feeling they felt something. It is a really beautiful movie about life and death and happiness and sadness and music.
“It is a beautiful story — a moment in time that doesn’t really have any boundaries.”
“As a young person horror films terrified me,” says Let Me In director Matt Reeve.
“To this day if you were to show me a picture of Linda Blair in her Regan MacNeil getup, and I wasn’t prepared, the hair would stand up on the back of my neck and my blood would run cold. I would have a visceral reaction, so it’s kind of ironic that that’s what I do now. I make genre films, and yet there is something about it that is a very exciting thing to do.”
Audiences and critics were certainly excited by his first film, Cloverfield, a movie one writer called “the closest a film has ever gotten to a roller-coaster ride.” It was a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am reinvention of the “big monster” movie that mixed Godzilla with the immediacy of reality TV. His new film, a remake of Let the Right One In, the Swedish art house hit about a vampire trapped in a 12-year-old body and her bullied neighbour, is less frenetic, but throws a new spin on the vampire tale.
“It is a vampire film in a different tradition,” says Reeves. “That has everything to do with [novelist] John Lindqvist’s story. It is an incredible story in that he takes the vampire genre and uses it as a way to describe the pain of adolescence. It is a strange thing to say, but I found in reading it, and in the Swedish version and in what we tried to do, I actually think that it is a very realistic sort of tale even though it is a vampire tale. This film has a bit of naturalism to it.”
Let Me In, Cloverfield and the films that frightened him as a child, he says, are effective because they are “about something other than what the surface part is. The metaphor they are using is a way to explore a lot of real and frightening things and to explore our own fears and that’s why you can make a movie about a giant monster trashing New York and it’s really not about that at all. That is what makes it challenging and interesting as a filmmaker.”
For some there are two season: winter and TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival). I admittedly fall in this camp as soon as Labour Day hits. As we’re approaching the climax of our own indie-darling-turned-blockbuster (yes, TIFF!), it’s time to take a breather and get some expert advice on the must-see movies from the festival.
The other day I was treated like an A-list celeb courtesy of NKPR, sipping the same Skyy vodka cocktails that would be served to celebs at some of the top parties. Plus, we were treated to a fashion show curated by designer-stylist, Rita Liefhebber, demonstrating the best day time to red carpet outfits.
Film critic Richard Crouse (you know the dapper dude who always sports a suit, thick-rimmed glasses and a Snooki-inspired bump) gives us his top 5 must-see movies at TIFF:
1. Buried
Ryan Reynolds plays a truck driver living in Iraq and who is stuck in a box – from opening credit to the end. ‘Nuff said.
2. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Directed by Woody Allen, this comedy-romance features an ensemble cast (Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, Frieda Pinto and Anthony Hopkins) who make get tangled up in a web of interrelated relationships and issues.
3. Fubar 2
Terry and Dean are back to give’r in the northern oil sands of Alberta.
4. Blue Valentine
Watch as Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams’ relationship slowly unravels from their early romantic courtship to a young, married couple.
5. Let Me In
Based on the critically acclaimed Swedish film, this vampire thriller follows two teen outsiders (a boy and a girl) who form a special friendship.
If you missed these films at the festival, not to fret because you can fill up your fall movie card and catch them at a theatre near you soon.
And, let us know if you saw some great (or not) movies at TIFF this year.
This weekend the story of a 12-year-old vampire who helps her young neighbour deal with bullies at school hits theatres.
Sound familiar?
It should, the movie is an American remake of a Swedish art house hit from less than twelve months ago. Let Me In, the English language remounting of Låt den rätte komma in, joins a long list of movies to paste an American stamp on its cinematic passport.
Let Me In is earning good reviews for its respectful treatment of the source material but that is not always the case. Critic Tom O’Neil warned, “Chances are, with the remake, Hollywood is just serving up re-fried beans that aren’t very tasty.”
Re-hashes like Weekend at Bernie’s, which was loosely based on the Indian cult classic Jane Bhi Do Yaaron and the Thai film Bangkok Dangerous, which won the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival international critics’ Award only to be retooled as a big budget, small-brained Nic Cage movie, have left a bad taste in viewer’s mouths but not all remakes are unpalatable.
The Departed, the Irish Mafia movie that gave Martin Scorsese his long deserved Best Director Oscar, was based on the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs.
Critics loved Scorsese’s film, giving it a 93 per cent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, although Infernal Affairs star Andy Lau grumbled, “The Departed was too long,” and Andrew Lau, the original’s co-director said, “of course I think the version I made is better but the Hollywood version is pretty good too.”
Also pretty good is Insomnia, Christopher Nolan’s 2002 remake of a 1997 Norwegian film of the same name. Directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg, the original’s story of a disgraced Swedish detective, played by Stellan Skarsgård, who struggles to solve a brutal murder case in northern Norway is a gritty psychological drama which writer Peter Cowie said “represents European cinema at its most challenging.”
The U.S. remake, starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank is a much different film. Roger Ebert said, “unlike most remakes, the Nolan Insomnia is not a pale retread, but a re-examination of the material, like a new production of a good play.”
These U.S. remakes have always been with us, and regardless of how Let Me In fares at the box office, are unlikely to stop. For better or for worse plans are already underway for an English remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo starring Daniel Craig.
This week on the Richard Crouse Show we celebrate Halloween with two of the stars of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Patricia Quinn and Nell Campbell. They both appeared in the original stage production and the movie, as castle maid Magenta and the tap-dancing Columbia respectively.
