Posts Tagged ‘Marielle Heller’

RICHARD’S CTV NEWSCHANNEL WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FOR NOV. 22!

Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including “Frozen 2,” “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” “Marriage Story” and “Waves.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

CTVNEWS.CA: THE CROUSE REVIEW ON “FROZEN 2” “MARRIAGE STORY” AND MORE!

A weekly feature from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest and most interesting movies! This week Richard looks at “Frozen 2,” Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” and Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson in “Marriage Story.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

CFRA IN OTTAWA: THE BILL CARROLL MORNING SHOW MOVIE REVIEWS!

Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including the icy charms of “Frozen 2,” Tom Hanks as television icon Mister Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” two films from Adam Driver, “Marriage Story” and “The Report” and one of the year’s very best films, “Waves” with CFRA morning show host Bill Carroll.

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

CJAD IN MONTREAL: THE ANDREW CARTER SHOW WITH RICHARD CROUSE ON MOVIES!

Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including “Frozen 2,” the highly icy sequel to one of Disney’s biggest animated hits, Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” and two films from Adam Driver, “Marriage Story” and “The Report.”

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: 4 STARS. “about the power of decency.”

What begins as an interview for a magazine piece becomes a series of impromptu therapy sessions that change a man’s life. Based on the Esquire article “Can You Say…Hero?” by Tom Junod, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” is the story of a person’s ability to find and give forgiveness.

Matthew Rhys is Lloyd Vogel (based on Tom Junod), a journalist with a newborn baby, a hair trigger temper, daddy issues and a habit of writing scathing profiles of his subjects. After a nasty incident at his sister’s wedding involving his estranged father Jerry (Chris Cooper) leaves him with the blackeye and a gash on his nose, his editor at Esquire assigns him a puff piece, a four-hundred-word sidebar on children’s broadcaster Mister Rogers (Tom Hanks) for an issue on Heroes. He doesn’t want the gig, thinking it is beneath his hard-hitting style. “Am I’m supposed to go easy on this guy because he plays with puppets for a living?”

Nonetheless, he travels to Philadelphia’s WQED, home of the Mister Roger’s show for a planned hour-long interview. He arrives to find the television icon spending time with a Make-A-Wish kid. He watches as Mister Rogers finds a way to connect with the distracted child. Later Rogers turns the table on Lloyd, answering his questions with questions, looking for answers as to why Lloyd is battered and bruised.

Back in New York, despite his editor’s instructions to keep it simple, Lloyd wants to go deeper. “I’m just not sure if he’s for real.” “Lloyd, please don’t ruin my childhood,” begs his wife Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson).

When Lloyd’s father Jerry has a life-threatening heart attack the lessons Mister Rogers imparts I their interviews about giving children a way to deal with their feelings begin to take on deeper meanings for Lloyd.

“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” isn’t a biopic of Mister Rogers, or a maudlin story of a bitter reporter with a father complex. It’s about decency, positivity as a powerful force and the importance of mentors, all filtered through the lens of a man who spoke to everyone, not just children.

Hanks goes beyond impersonation to unearth someone with hidden pockets of anger—hinted at but never fully displayed until the film’s final, elegiac moments—that help him understand Lloyd’s troubled relationship with his father and his seemingly unquenchable thirst to lash out.

Hanks takes the simple, home-style psychology—”There’s always something you can do with the mad you feel,” he says.—and imbues them with humour, earnestness and heart without dipping into saccharine sentimentality. It is a remarkable performance that could have simply relied on the tried and true portrait of Mister Rogers we’re familiar with from television but Hanks breathes life into it.

In one nervy scene Rogers and Lloyd “take a minute to think about all the people who loved us into being.” For sixty, silent seconds they stare at one another, allowing their minds to drift. Director Marielle Heller lets the moment sink in and in the silence—even the background noise is blocked out—we are reminded how little time we all spend, day in and day out, in quiet contemplation. It may be the movie’s most telling scene, the one that details how far away society has moved away from the core values of kindness and understanding Rogers preached.

“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” is, in many ways, a boilerplate story. The tale of a father and son separated by hate and time is something that we’ve seen many times and despite nice work from Rhys and Cooper, is the least compelling part of the movie. It’s the McGuffin that allows the chance to re-examine Mister Rogers’ potent, humanistic messages.

RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY OCTOBER 26, 2018.

Richard joins CP24 anchor Nathan Downer to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including Melissa McCarthy’s literary drama “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” the “Hunt for Red October” copy cat “Hunter Killer,” the highfalutin hostage story “Bel Canto,” the comedic cautionary tale “Room for Rent,” the family drama “What They Had” and the operatic documentary “Maria by Callas.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

CFRA IN OTTAWA: THE BILL CARROLL SHOW WITH RICHARD CROUSE ON MOVIES!

Richard has a look at Melissa McCarthy’s dramatic turn in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” the family drama “What They Had” and Gerard Butler’s action-adventure “Hunter Killer” with CFRA Morning Rush host Bill Carroll.

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

CTVNEWS.CA: THE CROUSE REVIEW LOOKS AT “CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?” AND MORE!

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 Melissa McCarthy’s literary drama “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” the family drama “What They Had” and the highfalutin hostage story “Bel Canto.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

 

CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?: 4 STARS. “best feel-good movie about loneliness ever made.”

In “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” Melissa McCarthy leaves behind the broad comedic portrayals that made her famous in favour of a character that puts realism ahead of the funny.

Based on a true story, McCarthy plays Lee Israel, a once successful writer with dozens of magazine profiles and even a best-selling biography on her resume. Her seventies and eighties heyday gives way to a change of fortune in the early nineties. After a book on cosmetics magnate Estée Lauder failed to grab the attention of the reading public the bottom falls out of her writing career. “No one is going to pay for Lee Israel right now,” says her agent (Jane Curtain) says. “I suggest you find another way to make a living.”

Broke and desperate, she finds an old letter from vaudeville star Fanny Brice and it changes her life for better and for worse. She sells the letter for big money and launches a second career forging and selling literary correspondence by celebrities from the likes of Noel Coward, Katherine Hepburn and Dorothy Parker. “I’m a better Dorothy Parker than Dorothy Parker,” she says. The letters serve two purposes in Lee’s life. They give her an outlet for her writing and the sales fill her bank account. “I have figured out how to pay the bills without shovelling s**t,” she says. With some help from her shady friend Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant), all goes well, or at least as well as anything in the troubled woman’s life could go, until the FBI start sniffing around.

We seen McCarthy play desperate before but we’ve never seen her quite like this. There are familiar shades in the performance, the quick temper, the lashing out but the difference is that here she’s playing a character, not a caricature. As Israel she adds notes to the character. She is both vulnerable and vicious, sardonic and self-doubting. We know she can do comedy but with this nicely nuanced work we now know she can deliver the dramatic goods.

As the flamboyant Jack, Lee’s only friend and partner in crime, Grant is equal parts smarm and charm. He’s the kind of outrageous character who says things like, “Maybe she didn’t die. Maybe she moved to the suburbs—I always confused the two,” and spends on what little money he has on getting his teeth bleached. He has a faded elegance about him that is both heartbreaking and hilarious.

“Can You Ever Forgive Me?” wraps up just a bit too conveniently, making it the best feel-good movie about loneliness and despondency ever made.