Richard speaks to “CTV News at 11:30” anchor Andria Case about television and movies to watch during the pandemic including Pete Davidson’s semi-autobiographical “The King of Staten Island,” the AMC game show scandal series “Quiz” and the latest from Disney+, “Artemis Fowl.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (20:31)
Richard sits in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to VOD and streaming services including the new Spike Lee joint “Da 5 Bloods,” the Pete Davidson semi-autobiographical story “The King of Staten Island,” the absurdist dramedy “It Must Be Heaven” and the latest from Disney+ “Artemis Fowl.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
For six seasons on “Saturday Night Live” Pete Davidson has tempered humour with acute candor to forge a deeply personal kind of comedy based on his life experiences. His new film, “The King of Staten Island,” now on VOD, is his most self-confessional work yet.
Davidson plays Scott, a semi-fictional version of himself, as a directionless twenty-four-year old still living with his widowed mother Margie (Marisa Tomei). When he was seven his firefighter father was killed in the line of duty, leaving a wound on Scott’s psyche that has never healed. He’s so skinny and pale with such large dark circles under his eyes his on-and-off girlfriend Kelsey (Bel Powley) says he “looks like an anorexic panda,” and his patchwork of random tattoos leads a friend to call him a “human sketchbook.” He dreams of one day opening up a restaurant-slash-tattoo parlor but spends most of his time smoking weed and hanging out with his childhood pals.
When Margie becomes romantically involved with Ray (Bill Burr), a firefighter with a hair trigger temper, it forces Scott to confront the past tragedy in his life so he can move forward.
“The King of Staten Island” is an imagined version of Davidson’s life if he hadn’t found comedy and become famous. His father Scott was a member of Ladder Company 118 in Brooklyn Heights and died responding to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That loss has become the bedrock of his work and provides the emotional backbone of this film.
Director Judd Apatow is no stranger to making films with big hearts and dirty mouths. Like his previous films, like “Trainwreck,” he frontloads the story with outrageous laughs that slowly give way to a funny but more restrained resolution.
Along the way Davidson delivers a performance that lifts his patented millennial slacker routine to a new level. He’s a natural performer, charismatic and likeable, with a deep well of emotion that lies just beneath his pothead exterior. He’s a perfect vessel to tell a story about someone experiencing profound loss.
The supporting cast is terrific. Burr embodies the ragehead with a heart of gold, drifting through life while Tomei has an interesting arc as a woman who lets go of the past to find a new future.
The premise of “The King of Staten Island” doesn’t sound like the stuff of comedy but this story of how tragedy effects a family balances humour with heartfelt and humanistic observations in a very winning way.
Richard joins CP24 to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including the dramedy “Brittany Runs a Marathon,” the gender equality doc “This Changes Everything” and the comedy “Road to the Lemon Grove.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including the life comedy “Brittany Runs a Marathon,” the gender equality doc “This Changes Everything” and the comedy “Road to the Lemon Grove.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including the hilariously inspirational “Brittany Runs a Marathon,” the gender equality doc “This Changes Everything” and the comedy “Road to the Lemon Grove” with CFRA morning show host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
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 Jillian Bell in “Brittany Runs a Marathon,” the gender equality doc “This Changes Everything” and the comedy “Road to the Lemon Grove.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
The statistics are familiar but still astounding. Take for instance the Academy Awards. In the ninety-year history of the Oscars only five women have been nominated in the director category and only one, Kathryn Bigelow, has taken a statue home. 85% of 2018’s Top 100 films were written by men. Women represent only one fourth of lead characters on the big-screen. A new documentary, “This Changes Everything,” showcases the statistics that show the female bias in Hollywood’s old boy network, but the film works best when telling the stories direct from the mouths of the women whose careers have been directly affected.
Using archival footage and interviews with a-listers like Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman, Taraji P. Henson, Reese Witherspoon and Cate Blanchett, people who have been “otherized by men,” plus director Maria Giese, showrunner Shonda Rhimes and producer Lauren Shuler Donner, the film is a first-hand account of decades of discrimination.
Director Tom Donahue uses graphs and pie-charts to present the cold hard data but the movie’s beating heart is in its testimonials.
Tiffany Haddish recalls the sense of empowerment she felt watching a fight scene between “Dynasty’s” Alexis Carrington (Joan Collins) and Dominique Deveraux (Diahann Carroll). “This is the first time I saw a Black woman with money, wearing diamonds. She’s having conversations with white women like she’s not even Black. She slapped this white woman so hard and they wrestled. I was like, ‘What!’ She didn’t even go to jail.
Chloe Grace Moretz looks back at the making movies as a teenager. On one shoot her wardrobe included breast enhancement “chicken cutlets.” At just fourteen she realized that the industry saw her as an “actress” rather than an actor. It was a self-esteem destroying exercise in being regarded as an object of male gaze rather than performer.
Oscar winner Geena Davis, founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, discusses her examination into gender inequality in Hollywood and the steps she has taken to generate the data that can affect industry-wide change. “I had been awakened to how women were portrayed in the media,” she says. “I realized we give them so few opportunities to feel inspired by the female characters.”
The presentation of the information is basic, talking heads, title cards and charts, but its retelling of the legal fights by the ACLU and DGA for equality coupled with the women’s personal stories make for a fascinating and compelling lesson.
“This Changes Everything’s” title is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the industry’s mantra that every successful female aimed project will lead to sweeping change. As the film makes perfectly clear that progress is being made, but there is still has a long way to go. “It is time for our business to wake up and realize it is good economics as well as the right thing to do,” says Witherspoon.
Richard joins CP24 anchor Nathan Downer to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” the pagan ceremonies of “Midsommar” and the poignant story-telling of “The Last Black Man in San Francisco.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
