On the Saturday June 13, 2026 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet award-winning actor, writer, and director Mark O’Brien. You know him as Des Courtney on Republic of Doyle and ambitious Deputy District Attorney Thomas Milligan on HBO’s Perry Mason. On the big screen he’s delivered standout performances in films like Arrival, Ready or Not, Marriage Story, and Goalie — for which he won a Canadian Screen Award. More recently, he’s been behind the camera with his acclaimed directorial debut The Righteous, and now his chilling new supernatural horror film The Voices of Our Mother, which he wrote, directed, and stars in.
Then, we’ll meet Kevin Hardcastle, an award-winning Canadian author whose debut short story collection Debris won the Trillium Book Award and ReLit Award, while his first novel In the Cage established him as a powerful voice in contemporary fiction. In his highly anticipated new novel County Road Six, Hardcastle delivers a taut, propulsive family drama about four O’Hare sisters forced to confront their violent father’s legacy and a long-buried secret on a decaying farmstead in rural Ontario.
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 Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
All iHeartRadio Canada stations are available across Canada via live stream on iHeartRadio.caand the iHeartRadio Canada app. iHeartRadio Canada stations are also connected through Alexa, Siri, and Google Home smart speakers.
I sit with host Deb Hutton on NewsTalk 1010 to talk about to the recent Tony Award winner “Giant,” Rush’s triumphant return to the stage, Glenn Close’s honorary Oscar, and I review the alien thrills of “Disclosure Day,” the spoof “Stop! That! Train!” and the supernatural “The Voice Of Our Mother.”
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the alien thrills of “Disclosure Day,” the spoof “Stop! That! Train!” and the supernatural “The Voice Of Our Mother.”
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to brush your teeth. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the alien thrills of “Disclosure Day,” the spoof “Stop! That! Train!” and the supernatural “The Voice Of Our Mother.”
SYNOPSIS: In “The Voices of Our Mother,” a new gothic family drama now playing in theatres, a death in the family revives old animosities and secrets, leaving a group of estranged siblings to wonder if their situation is natural or supernatural.
CAST: Mark O’Brien, Sheila McCarthy, Georgina Reilly, Carolina Bartczak, Alex Ozerov-Meyer, and Anna Ferguson.
REVIEW: A mix of family drama and the supernatural, “The Voices of Our Mother” takes geriatric health issues and gives them a demonic spin.
When we first meet family matriarch Harriet Scaflen (Sheila McCarthy) her health has taken a turn after the death of his 95-year-old mother.
Her four children, William (Mark O’Brien, who also wrote and directs), Annika (Georgina Reilly), Therese (Carolina Bartczak) and Martin (Alex Ozerov-Meyer), are summoned to the family home to figure out next steps. Trouble is, they are estranged from her and each other.
Despite their mother’s presiding physician’s claims that she “appears to be healthy,” something must be wrong because mom has never behaved like this before.
A story of evil awoken from resentment, revenge, grief and intergenerational trauma, “The Voices of Our Mother” has a great ensemble, but it’s Sheila McCarthy’s wild performance that sticks.
The “I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing” hands in an uninhibited performance that brings her inner demon to the fore. She’s no stranger to horror, having appeared in “Anything for Jackson,” a dark horror comedy about ancient spells and a “reverse-exorcism,” but her work here brings an intensity that is truly disturbing. It’s also interesting to see the usual trope of a child possessed by evil flipped to an elderly matriarch.
Writer, director and actor Mark O’Brien takes a relatable situation, a family brought together to care for a parent, and weaves in ideas of intergenerational trauma and family secrets as a catalyst for a slow-burn story of ancestral evil and possession.
Add to that atmospheric sound design and some wild practical effects and you get “The Family Stone” meets “The Exorcist” with a side of “Hereditary” for extra impact.
“The Voices of Our Mother’s” slow burn ignites when McCarthy lets her freak flag fly but it also does a nice job of blending family dysfunction with the supernatural.
SYNOPSIS: In “Nuremberg,” a new historical drama starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek, and now playing in theatres, a U.S. Army psychiatrist studies high-ranking Nazi officers, including Hermann Göring (Crowe), the notorious former Reichsmarschall and Hitler’s second in command, to determine their competency to stand trial for war crimes.
CAST: Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon, Leo Woodall, John Slattery, Mark O’Brien, Colin Hanks, Wrenn Schmidt, Lydia Peckham, Richard E. Grant. Directed by James Vanderbilt.
REVIEW: Based on Jack El-Hai’s non-fiction book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist,” “Nuremberg” is a handsomely mounted, old-fashioned drama that aims to comment on timely issues.
Set at the end of World War II the film sees U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon) spearheading the world’s first International Military Tribunal. Among those accused of committing atrocities are Hitler’s right hand man Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) and 21 other members of the Nazi high command.
To determine the prisoner’s fitness for trial Army psychologist Lt. Col. Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) is brought in to assess the men and their mental states. Entering into a “battle of wits” with the charismatic and intelligent Göring, Kelley attempts to understand the true nature of evil.
“Nuremberg” clarifies its intent in the film’s final moment when a title card reading, “The only clue to what man can do is what man has done,” a quote from English philosopher R.G. Collingwood, appears on the screen. Writer, co-producer, and director by James Vanderbilt (best known as the writer of “Zodiac” and “The Amazing Spider-Man”) makes an urgent plea for today’s audience to never forget how fascism can take hold. In our modern world, where intolerance is on the rise, the lessons of the past echo loudly and demand our attention.
I just wish the film was a more powerful vehicle for the messaging.
Despite scenes of trauma, suicide and a downbeat ending, “Nuremberg” is too restrained to leave a mark on viewers. Crowe and Malek spark in their scenes, creating a cat-and-mouse game in which the power dynamic is ever shifting, and while thier performances have dramatic heft, there’s a melodramatic edge to the storytelling that blunts the impact of the film’s central premise.
“Nuremberg” is packed with big, timely lessons but its stilted presentation doesn’t deliver the emotional impact to accompany its warnings.
On the March 15, 2025 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we meet Atom Egoyan and Amanda Seyfried of the new film “Seven Veils.” In this a new psychological thriller, now playing in theatres, Seyfried is Jeanine, a director dealing with repressed trauma as she mounts a production of her mentor’s most famous work, the opera “Salome.” Rich with metaphor and suspense “Seven Veils” is an intellectual thriller about art imitating life.
We also meet Sonequa Martin-Green. You know her from “Star Trek: Discovery,” “New Girl” and “The Good Wife.” She also played Sasha Williams, a main character and a survivor of the outbreak in “The Walking Dead.”
Today we’ll talk about her new film, the dark comedy “My Dead Friend Zoe,” now playing in theatres. In it she plays an Afghanistan veteran haunted by her late best friend Zoe. Now in civilian life, she searches for a way forward as she suffers from PTSD and tends to her retired Lieutenant-Colonel grandfather played by Ed Harris.
Then we meet Keira Jang, star of Can I Get A Witness?” a new Canadian eco-sci fi/coming-of-age film now playing in theaters. It’s set in a future where climate change and world poverty have been eradicated. To mitigate these modern-day issues, travel and technology are banned and every citizen must end life at 50. Documenting the process are artists as witnesses, like the character Kiera plays, a teenager on her first day on the job.
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 Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
All iHeartRadio Canada stations are available across Canada via live stream on iHeartRadio.caand the iHeartRadio Canada app. iHeartRadio Canada stations are also connected through Alexa, Siri, and Google Home smart speakers.
“The Righteous,” a new supernatural thriller written, directed and starring “City on a Hill’s” Mark O’Brien, is an unsettling slow burn on redemption and retribution that asks, “What is the price of sin?”
“Be careful what you wish for. But be certain what you pray for.”
Shot in lush black and white, and set in a remote home far from the closest neighbor, the quiet of the surroundings echoes the somber lives led by Frederic (Henry Czerny) and Ethel (Mimi Kuzyk) Mason, a married couple still stinging from the loss of their daughter.
Frederic is a pious man, a former priest who left the church, in scandal, after falling for Ethel. Their carefully calibrated lives are turned upside down when Aaron Smith (O’Brien), an injured man with good manners and a secret, shows up at their door. Lost, he needs help, aid Frederic is happy to oblige. “Where are you from?” “Everywhere,” he replies.
At first, he’s a welcome guest. Ethel warms to him, finding comfort in the presence of a young person to fill the hole in her heart. But late-night dinner table conversations between Frederic and Aaron change the nature of their relationship, leading to a combustible situation and a horrifying request.
“The Righteous” is a psychological thriller that takes its time, doling out the story’s inherent sense of menace slowly but surely. As the tension mounts, director O’Brien resists the temptation to up the action. Instead, he trusts the script and performances to bring the strange, powerful story of atonement to its conclusion.
The horror of the situation escalates courtesy of the battle of wills between Aaron and Frederic. It’s the struggle between good and evil, of faith and the secular life, propelled by a series of kitchen table conversations between Aaron and Frederic that are the jaundiced soul of this story. Beautifully performed, they are chamber pieces, enhanced by subtle but effective shifts in lighting that telegraph the changing mood, and spiritual angst, of the scenes.
A small film containing big ideas, “The Righteous” succeeds because of a clarity of direction—O’Brien knows what he wants to do in every scene—and the performances, from Czerny’s tortured gravitas and Kuzyk’s warmth to O’Brien’s enigmatic work.
“Blue Bayou,” a new immigration drama starring Justin Chon and Alicia Vikander, tells a fictional, but all-too-true, story that is sincere but heavy-handed.
Written, directed and starring Chon, the story takes place in the Louisiana bayou. Chon plays the Korean-born Antonio LeBlanc, adopted by an American family when he was three. Now married to Kathy (Vikander) he’s raising step-daughter Jessie (Sydney Kowalske) with another child on the way.
A loping Cajun twang disguises the anxiety he feels with a new baby coming but not enough money coming in. His two felonies make it tough to find extra work, and his job as a tattoo artist does not cover the bills. Still, the family is happy, even if Jessie is concerned Antonio, the self-proclaimed “fun” parent, won’t spend time with her when the new baby arrives.
A little spat between Kathy and Antonio in a grocery escalates when Ace, a cop and her ex-husband, and his violent partner (Emory Cohen) get involved. Antonio is arrested. When Kathy attempts to pay his bail, she’s told, matter-of-factly, “He’s not here anymore. ICE took him.”
Seems his adoptive parents didn’t follow the proper procedures to make him a citizen, and now, after thirty years in America he may have to return to a country he doesn’t remember.
“I understand your frustration,” says the lawyer (Vondie Curtis-Hall) the couple hire but can’t afford. “Depart voluntarily,” he continues, “and have a chance to get back in. You can fight, but if you lose, you can never come back.”
“I’m not leaving my family,” Antonio replies.
“Blue Bayou” has much going for it. Chon has a poetic eye for visuals and frames the hot button story nicely. There are enough details about the family to make us care about them and Antonio’s backstory adds some mystery to the proceedings. The chemistry between the core group—Antonio, Kathy and Jessie—feels genuine—Kowalske is a real find—and, as the immigration situation spins out of control, we’re along for the ride. But as the story gets heavier, so does the story-telling. Like leaden.
Chon’s characters are so compelling and much of the tale so heartfelt, that it’s a disappointment when the movie turns to melodrama in its final third. Nuance goes out the window and the quiet naturalism of the first half disappears. Add to that a villain in the form of Cohen’s bad cop character who seems to have wandered in from a British pantomime and you’re left with a case of the let-downs.
“Blue Bayou” details a very important, and for many people, very personal story, but falls victim to ham-fisted storytelling.
