I sit in with NewsTalk 1010 host Jim Richards on the coast-to-coast-to-coast late night “NewsTalk Tonight” to play the game “Did Richard Crouse Like This?” This week we talk about the soulful sci fi of “The Creator,” the family dramedy “Flora and Son,” the gross and gory “Saw X.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I joined CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres. Today we talk about the soulful sci fi of “The Creator,” the gross and gory “Saw X” and the new Prime Video series “The Continental: From the World of John Wick.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to shut the door! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the soulful sci fi of “The Creator,” the family dramedy “Flora and Son” and the gross and gory “Saw X.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the soulful sci fi of “The Creator,” the family dramedy “Flora and Son,” the kid’s flick “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie,” the gross and gory “Saw X” and the crime drama “Reptile.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
In the world of franchises when a character dies, they’re not really dead until people stop buying tickets to see the movies. Such is the case with “Saw X,” the latest instalment of the nineteen-year-old torture horror franchise.
Serial killer John “Jigsaw” Kramer, played by Tobin Bell, is the main antagonist of the “Saw” flicks. He’s the mastermind behind the ingenious traps, like the elaborate Laser Collar, the aptly named Knife Chair or the self-explanatory Shotgun Carousel, designed to inflict maximum physical and psychological trauma on his victims.
He is a bad man who communicates the bad news to his quarries through the creepy Billy the Puppet, a nightmarish ventriloquist’s dummy with garish red swirls on his cheeks.
Or I should say was a bad man. They killed the character off in “Saw III,” but in the “Saw” Universe, death isn’t enough to keep a good sadistic serial killer down, so he appears via flashback in subsequent instalments, and was the inspiration for a new killer in 2021’s “Spiral.”
Now through the magic of prequels, he’s back in the flesh, picking up the story where the 2004’s “Saw” left off.
The new film begins with Kramer, riddled with cancer, decamping to Mexico in the hopes of a miracle cure. The procedure is risky and experimental but, “The results have been stunning,” says Dr. Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund).
When it turns out the whole thing is a scam, designed to provide hope, but no actual medical benefit to patients, Kramer gets even in his own, terrible way.
“You all pretended to cure me,” he says, “but what I have planned for each of you is very real.”
The “Saw” movies pretend to have a moral, a manifesto driven by Kramer’s twisted sense of finding atonement through pain via deadly games of “Truth or Consequences.” That high minded philosophy is given lip service in “Saw X,” but takes a backseat to the graphic kills.
Put it this way: “Saw X” is less about the moral code and more about using a person’s intestines as a rope or sucking someone’s eyeballs right out of their sockets.
After a drawn out first hour of set up, the ick factor is notched up, making this the juiciest and goriest “Saw” film to date. Trouble is, it’s stomach-turning with very few scares. It’s unpleasant by design, but the dopamine hit you’re looking for, the rush of feeling scared in a theatre where you are safe, is replaced by a queasy feeling.
Each test is timed, and there are countdown clocks galore, ticking away to the end of the games, but there isn’t much tension, just an uneasy sensation that something terrible is coming.
It might be different if there was some kind of inventive symbolism in the games, a sense that there is something happening to stimulate the brain, not just the gag reflex.
For a movie that is all about games—Kramer refers to each of his tests as “games”—the R-rated “Saw X” is all gory games but very little fun.
Richard joins CP24 anchor Cristina Tenaglia to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including Christian Bale as former vice president Dick Cheney in “Vice,” the James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk” and Felicity Jones as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg in “On the Basis of Sex.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Angie Seth to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including Christian Bale as Dick Cheney in “Vice,” the James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk” and Felicity Jones as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg in “On the Basis of Sex.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
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 the Dick Cheney biopic “Vice,” the James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk,” and Felicity Jones as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg in “On the Basis of Sex.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Based on a well-loved James Baldwin novel, “If Beale Street Could Talk” is a story of love in the face of injustice. Director Barry Jenkins, in his follow-up to the Oscar winning “Moonlight,” has crafted a stately film that takes us inside the relationship at the heart of the story and the heartlessness that threatens to rip it apart.
Childhood friends “Tish” Rivers (Kiki Layne) and Alonzo “Fonny” Hunt (Stephan James) kept their relationship platonic until it blossomed into love when she was 19 and he was 22. With a lifetime of familiarity behind them, their relationship progresses quickly. They move into together and wait for the birth of their first child when tragedy strikes. Framed for sexual assault by racist cop Officer Bell (Ed Skrein) Fonny is thrown in jail. “I hope nobody ever has to look at somebody they love through class,” Tish says. The families rally to raise money for his defence but circumstance conspires to keep him incarcerated.
“If Beale Street Could Talk” is a love story framed against a backdrop of disenfranchisement and turmoil. It is about a woman’s love for her fiancé, a mother and father‘s for their daughter, the power of love to be the fuel of survival. As the faces of this love Jenkins displays an impeccable eye for casting. Through their body language and easy chemistry Layne and James hand in performances ripe with empathy, power and, here’s that word again, love.
There is a delicacy to the filmmaking. Jenkins takes his time, slowly building the story of heartbreak tinged with hope. It’s a period piece but placed alongside the spate of newspaper stories of young African-American men by police it feels as timely as today’s headlines.
