Richard sits in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the return of the Crawleys in “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” the menacing “Men” starring Jessie Buckley, the warm-hearted comedy “The Valet” and the wild and wacky “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard joins NewsTalk 1010 host David Cooper on the coast-to-coast-to-coast late night “Showgram” to play the game “Did Richard Crouse Like This?” This week we talk about the return of the Crawleys in “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” the menacing “Men” starring Jessie Buckley and the warm-hearted comedy “The Valet.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
The title, “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” promises a moving-forward of the big screen adventures of the aristocratic Crawley family. Fans want more story, but progress? That’s something else.
The popular television series and 2019 film delivered a preserved-in-amber glimpse at melodramatic “Upstairs, Downstairs” classism mixed with some laughs, a touch of sentimentality and expertly delivered barbs from Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess. Fans embraced the illusion of high-mindedness and the fantasy of life at the mansion.
For enthusiasts, a return to Downtown is a creature comfort, like a cup of hot tea with a warm crumpet. You don’t have it often, but when you do, you want it to taste exactly the same as it always has. The presentation can be tweaked, but the essence must be untouched.
Director Simon Curtis and writer Julian Fellows, seem to understand what fans expect, and deliver. It may be predictable, but narrative complacency is part of its appeal for folks who spent six seasons on television getting to know these characters.
The story begins in 1929 as the Dowager Countess of Grantham inherits a beautiful villa on the Cotes d’Azur from a long-ago admirer. The family, Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), Lady Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern), Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael), Tom (Allen Leech), Lucy (Tuppence Middleton) and the ever-dutiful Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) pack up there best and head to the South of France. “They better be warned,” says Mr. Carson, “the British are coming.”
Once there, a mysterious locket appears to hold the key to a long-withheld family secret and a decades-old “idyllic interlude.”
Meanwhile back at Downton Abbey, an expensive roof repair convinces Lord Grantham to allow a film crew to shoot in the grand old mansion in return for a large rental fee. The downstairs workers are excited but Grantham’s enthusiasm is muted. “I think it’s a horrible idea,” he snorts. “Actresses plastered in make-up and actors just plastered.” Still, the roof is leaking and soon the house’s grand rooms are overrun by a film crew, including director Jack Barber (Hugh Danccy) and his stars, matinee idol Guy Dexter (Dominic West) and the glamorous Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock). “We got through the war,” groans the Dowager Countess. “We can get through this.”
Later in the film the Dowager Countess says that life is about “getting past the unexpected.” That may apply to life at the Abbey, but it certainly doesn’t apply to the movie because there is nothing unexpected about anything that happens in the film’s two-hour running time. A better title may have been “Downton Abbey: Fan Service,” because it is a crowd-pleasing slow simmering stew of favorite ingredients, with no extra spice or flavorings. It is what the fans expect, no more but sometimes less.
“Downton Abbey: A New Era” is a plucky, stiff upper lipped movie meant for devotees who will likely excuse the filmmaking, which is as dry as a day-old scone at tea time.
Richard and CP24 anchor Courtney Heels have a look at the weekend’s new movies including the English antics of “The Gentlemen,” the heartfelt heroics of “The Last Good Measure” and the spacey drama of “Color Out of Space.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including the heartfelt heroics of “The Last Good Measure” and the spacey drama of “Color Out of Space” and Guy Ritchie’s return to form in “The Gentlemen.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including Guy Ritchie’s return to the street in “The Gentlemen,” the heartfelt heroics of “The Last Good Measure” and the spacey drama of “Color Out of Space.”
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 the return of “Snatch” style Guy Ritchie in “The Gentlemen,” the war drama “The Last Good Measure” and the first weird Nicolas Cage movie of 2020 “Color Out of Space.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the wham-bam-thank-you-maam theatrics of “The Gentlemen,” the heartfelt heroics of “The Last Good Measure” and the spacey drama of “Color Out of Space.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Anyone who thinks the Guy Ritchie of old has disappeared, crushed under the weight of the huge box office grosses of the family-friendly “Aladdin,” need look no further than the blood splattered pint mug of “The Gentlemen’s” opening scene for proof to the contrary.
Highly stylized crime comedies like “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch” made Ritchie the king of fast-paced, politically-incorrect stories of life on the streets. The big budget movies, his Sherlock Holmes series and “Aladdin,” among others, made more money but lacked the visceral thrills of his early work. His new film, “The Gentlemen,” starring Matthew McConaughey, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant, feels like a hybrid of the two phases of his career. A spiritual cousin to “Lock, Stock” and ”Snatch,” it brings Ritchie back to London’s underworld, a place populated by Saville Row suit-wearing tough guys, ruthless tabloid editors and henchmen who speak like down-on-their-heels Oxford drop outs.
Matthew McConaughey is Mickey Pearson, an American who built a weed empire in his adopted home country of England. Intelligent and ruthless—qualities matched only by his wife Rosalind (Dockery)—he’s now middle-aged and looking to cash out. His offers to sell the business to billionaire drug lord Matthew Berger (a very mannered Jeremy Strong) for $400 million attracts unwanted attention from Dry Eye (Golding), the ruthless youngest nephew of an aging crime lord.
There’s more, but this is a pretzel of a story, twisted and tied in knots.
“The Gentlemen” is not a sequel or a reboot but it feels like one. The hyper-masculine story telling style, inventive use of swear words and spider-web plotting, while audacious, will be very familiar to Ritchie-philes. It’s “Snatch 2.0” with the same kind of big name cast who seem to be having fun mouthing Ritchie’s profanity laden dialogue but no amount of fast cutting and fast talking can replace real energy. As rock ‘n rolling as the filmmaking is, the story acts as an anchor, bogging things down as it gets more and more convoluted.
It’s too bad because Ritchie takes pains to create the very specific world his characters inhabit, and it is a colourful place but it seems that he never met a plot twist he didn’t love. As the plot thickens, and it does thicken almost to the point of impenetrability, the movie begins to feel overstuffed. To help the audience along Ritchie binds everything together with a silly framing device involving Fletcher (Grant), a private eye/blackmailer who unfurls the complicated story to Pearson’s right-hand-man Raymond (Charlie Hunnam). It’s time consuming and adds little to the picture except for Hugh Grant’s exaggerated accent as he delivers flowery lines like, “Our antagonist explodes on the scene, like a millennial firework.”
“The Gentlemen” feels like an exercise in nostalgia, back to era of Ritchie’s frenetic jump cuts and outdated attitudes about race disguised as quippy dialogue.
