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 “Gemini Man,” “Lucky Day” and “Lucy in the Sky.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including the high frame rate of “Gemini Man,” the high violence of “Lucky Day” and the high flying theatrics of “Lucy in the Sky” with CFRA morning show host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I suppose enough time has elapsed so that a film like “Lucky Day” can no longer be seen simply as a Quentin Tarantino rip off but can now be regarded as an homage to the crime movies of the 1990s, especially when it is directed by Roger Avary, the co-writer of “Pulp Fiction.”
The film takes place during one eventful and bloody day. It begins with Red (Luke Bracey), a safecracker with an artist wife Chloe (Nina Dobrev) and adorable daughter Beatrice (Ella Ryan Quinn), finishing up a two-year jail sentence for a heist gone wrong. As low lifes go he’s a decent sort. He’s a just a guy who robbed a bank and skimmed half a million bucks to look after his family.
Luc (Crispin Glover) doesn’t quite see it that way. He’s a hitman for a crime cartel called The Connection. “I’m in the retirement business,” he tells border security in his outrageous and completely fake French accent. He’s come to California to “retire” Red. Seems Luc’s brother was part of Red’s team but was killed in action and now the faux Frenchman has come to exact his revenge.
“Pulp Fiction,” for better and for worse, inspired a slew of imitators complete with over-the-top violence, groovy yet quirky soundtracks, old-school details and unusual characters. And don’t forget the irreverent, edgy and politically incorrect dialogue.
“Lucky Day” falls firmly into the Pretend “Pulp Fiction” category.
It’s a movie with all the bits and pieces of the Tarantino classic but with a tenth of the impact. To be fair, Avary pulls charming performances from the cast, crafting the kind of eccentric, cartoonish characters that fuel these kind of films but nothing really connects. From start to finish you know who will survive and who won’t so the stakes never seem very high even when Luc has nice people in the crosshairs of his gun.
In “Lucky Day” Avary has made a buoyant, if predictable thriller, efficiently told, with some laughs and a gallon or ten of blood to paint the screen. It’s not “Pulp Fiction” but then again, what is?
Richard joins CP24 anchor Nathan Downer to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum,” “The Sun is Also a Star” and the social documentary “This is North Preston.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
A weekly feature from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum,” “The Sun is Also a Star” and the social documentary “This is North Preston.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Marcia MacMillan have a look at the weekend’s big releases including the shoot-punch-stab-’em-up “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum,” the romantic teen drama “The Sun is Also a Star” and the social doc “This is North Preston.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including fists of fury of “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum,” the teen dreams of “The Sun is Also a Star” and the social documentary “This is North Preston” with CFRA Morning Rush host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Why did they have to kill the dog?
Cast your mind back to 2014. John Wick, the retired super assassin played by Keanu Reeves, was attempting to move on after the death of his wife. Keeping him company was a puppy, sent by his wife just before she died in the hopes that the dog’s love will help ease his pain. But then came the bad men who broke into his house to steal his super nifty 1970 Mustang. Things go sideways and the thieves do the unspeakable.
They kill the dog.
Big mistake. The doggy’s daddy is a killing machine. How wicked is John Wick? “Is he the boogeyman?” asks one former associate. “He was the one we sent to kill the boogeyman.”
Thus, was set into motion the series of bloody, open-up-a-can-of-whoop-ass events that lead us to “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.”
Following “Chapter 2” which saw Wick ostracized from the exclusive world of killers-for-hire after breaking some very Old Testament style rules laid down by Winston (Ian McShane), operator of the mysterious assassin association the High Table. Now Wick has a $14 million price tag on his head and an army of international bounty-hunters on his tail.
You don’t go to “John Wick” movies for nuanced character development. You go for the kick butt-ery. “Chapter 3” delivers on the promise of action with scenes that show Wick dispatching a man using nothing but a book, stabbing somebody in the eye – that one is gruesome – and, of course shooting everyone in sight. There is so much and gunplay it’s as if they had to use up all of “Chapter 3’s” bullet budget or they wouldn’t get it again for the inevitable sequel.
These action scenes are carefully choreographed and the absence of music in the early fights emphasizes the brutality and the absurdity of the violence. But while we expect uber-violence from this franchise, we also expect consistently inventive battle scenes. There’s some of that—the action scenes involving horses and motorcycles are wild and woolly—but a long shoot-out in Casablanca is just that – a long shoot-out in Casablanca that feels plucked from a video game.
As the series moves further away from the original “dead puppy“ revenge plot of the original it is losing some of the simplicity that made the first two movies so enjoyable. The world of the High Table comes with rules of plenty but in the context of these action films less could be more. We don’t need complicated world building. This isn’t a Marvel movie, it’s a fists of fury action flick that threatens to get bogged down by details.
Having said that, “Chapter Three – Parabellum” (a Latin phrase meaning ‘prepare for war’) is still a hoot and features some of the coolest fight scenes in movies right now despite its excesses.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the kick butt-ery of “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” and the teen romance of “The Sun is Also a Star.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
