A new 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 killer birthday blues of “Happy Death Day,” Jackie Chan’s return to adult drama “The Foreigner” and Liam Neeson in the self explanatory “Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies including the birthday blues of “Happy Death Day,” Jackie Chan’s return to adult drama “The Foreigner” and Liam Neeson in the self explanatory “Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the birthday blues of “Happy Death Day,” Jackie Chan’s return to adult drama “The Foreigner” and Liam Neeson in the self explanatory “Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Kids know and love martial arts legend Jackie Chan from flicks like “The LEGO Ninjago Movie” and “The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature.” With the release of the revenge drama “The Foreigner” he’s back into adult territory.
Sixty-three-year-old Chan plays London-based restaurateur Quan Ngoc Minh whose daughter Fan (Katie Leung) is an innocent victim of a bomb attack on a fancy Knightsbridge dress shop perpetrated by a group called the Authentic IRA. Stricken with grief and fuelled by anger he embarks on a mission to track down the people responsible for killing his child. His journey of revenge takes him to Belfast where he zeros in on Liam Hennessy (Pierce Brosnan), a Martin McGuinness type politician and former IRA member.
Quan, as it turns out, while old, frail looking is no one to be trifled with. I mean, this is Jackie Chan we’re talking about here. Before he was the counter man at the Happy Peacock Restaurant he was a special forces solider, trained in all manner of bomb laying and bone breaking. When Hennessy rebuffs Quan, denying any knowledge of the murderous events—“I realize you are angry,” he says, “but there’s not much I can do.”—and kicking the desperate man out of his office, he sets into motion a series of events that will see the restaurateur show his true colours.
“The Foreigner” is an action film but when the fists aren’t flying it concentrates on the fraying edges of Hennessy’s political career.
Chan’s presence dropkicks what is otherwise a rather straightforward story of revenge, directed with simple elegance by Martin Campbell, into the realm of the enjoyable. He walks like a hunched over grandpa but packs a punch like Bruce Lee.
There’s a buzz that comes with a Jackie Chan fight scene. Who else, at an age when CARP brochures start showing up in the mail, would jump through a window, grab hold of a drainage pipe and slide 20 feet down to a rooftop. Jackie Chan, that’s who. The action feels real because it is and that authenticity gives “The Foreigner” much of its electro-charge.
Brosnan is a coiled spring, a politician with secrets and an iron will. His tale of political intrigue overshadows Quan‘s story—Chan disappears for a big chunk of the movie—but it does give him a chance to chew the scenery and have some fun.
“The Foreigner” isn’t a memorable movie but it is a welcome return to the action genre for Chan and Brosnan after too long a time away.
A new feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at “Ghost in the Shell,” “The Boss Basby” and “The Zookeeper’s Wife.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard and CP24 anchor George Lagogianes have a look at the weekend’s new movies, the reimagined sci fi classic “Ghost in the Shell,” Alec Baldwin as a bossy tot in “The Boss Baby” and Jessica Chastain in “The Zookeeper’s Wife.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the big weekend movies, the reimagined sci fi classic “Ghost in the Shell,” Alec Baldwin as a bossy tot in “The Boss Baby” and Jessica Chastain in “The Zookeeper’s Wife.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Based on the true story of Jan and Antonina Zabinski, Warsaw Zookeepers played by Johan Heldenbergh and Jessica Chastain, “The Zookeeper’s Wife” is the tale of a couple who followed their conscience, rescuing more than 300 Jews during World War II.
The action begins in 1939, months before the German invasion of Poland. The zoo is a sanctuary, run by Jan and Antonina, who treat the animals almost like family. “Good morning sweetheart,” Antonina says, greeting a tiger before giving CPR to a baby elephant later in the day. Then Nazi bombs fall, scattering the animals, effectively shutting down the zoo. When Nazi zoologist Lutz Heck (Daniel Brühl) offers to move the zoo’s surviving animals to Germany for safe-keeping and selective breeding in the hope of bringing back from extinction one of Europe’s most imposing creatures, the aurochs, the Zabinskis make a counter offer. They propose running the facility as a pig farm, using garbage from the Warsaw Ghetto as feed. Their selling point? It will provide food for German soldiers. Their motive? To create a secret safe haven for Warsaw Ghetto Jews, a “human zoo,” as Antonina wistfully calls it.
“The Zookeeper’s Wife” is a simply but effectively told hero’s journey. To her credit director Niki “Whale Rider” Caro has made a handsome movie about a harrowing time. It looks and feels like a big budget period piece, befitting the gravity of the story, but despite some memorable scenes the film feels like it left much of the drama unplumbed. It’s an important story but we don’t spend enough time with the rescued people to truly get a sense of their lives and the movie feels incomplete without as a result.
Chastain holds the centre of the story, providing a steely, compelling—although distractingly accented—character. She shines in her scenes opposite Brühl, a series of cat-and-mouse meetings where she feigns friendship, bonding over a shared love of animals, with the Nazi to keep her hidden dependants safe.
Despite narrative flaws “The Zookeeper’s Wife” contains unforgettable images. The shots of children being comforted by their teacher as they are loaded onto Nazi trains are as memorable as they are heart wrenching. It also contains many instances of animal cruelty. I’m sure no animals were actually harmed during the making of this movie but it doesn’t make the killing of the zoo animals any easier to watch.
