Richard speaks to “CTV News at 11:30” anchor Andria Case about movies on VOD and in theatres to watch this weekend including “The Secrets We Keep” (digital and on-demand), “I Am Greta” (in theatres) and “Totally Under Control” (Digital and on-demand).
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 19:34)
Richard and CP24 anchor Cristina Tenaglia have a look at the new movies coming to theatres, VOD and streaming services including “The Secrets We Keep” (digital and on-demand), “Vampires vs. the Bronx” (Netflix), “I Am Greta” (in theatres) and “Totally Under Control” (Digital and on-demand).
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, VOD and streaming services including “The Secrets We Keep” (digital and on-demand), “Vampires vs. the Bronx” (Netflix), “I Am Greta” (in theatres) and “Totally Under Control” (Digital and on-demand).
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“The Secrets We Keep,” a new revenge thriller starring Noomi Rapace and coming to digital and on-demand, is a riff on the claustrophobic revenge story of “Death and the Maiden.”
Set in 1960, Rapace plays Maja, a Romanian refugee and Holocaust survivor, now living in a small American town with her physician doctor Lewis (Chris Messina) and son Patrick (Jackson Vincent). One day at the park she hears a man whistle for his dog and a flood of memories come back. Following him home she gets a good look and her worst fears are confirmed. He is the SS officer who, near the end of the war, raped her and killed her sister as they fled a concentration camp.
Blinded by anger and horrific memories she kidnaps him, hitting him in the head with a hammer and shoving him in the trunk of her car. When Lewis gets home to find the man, who denies Maja’s charges and claims to be a Swiss citizen named Thomas (Joel Kinnaman, who, in real life went to high school with Rapace), tied up in the basement he is rightfully perplexed. Maja had never shared to the details of her ordeal with her husband but he trusts her and goes along with plan to get a confession, one way or another. “I’m not the man you think I am,” Thomas (or whatever his name is) says, begging to be let go. She is tortured by the memory of what happened and why her sister was shot and she wasn’t. “Help me remember,” she says to him. “It is your only way out of here.”
“The Secrets We Keep” raises questions of trust, survivor’s guilt and the corrosive nature of secrets. It’s a gritty, unsentimental movie that ratches up the tension with ideas, not action. How reliable is Maja’s memory? What amount of scepticism should Lewis bring to this situation? Is vengeance morally correct? Those questions and more hang heavy over the plot, confronting the viewer to assess their own feelings and biases. The story isn’t particularly tricky but it is carefully calibrated to make you wonder who is telling the truth, who is lying and even, who can trust their memories of long-ago events.
Rapace does her best work ever in an English film, bringing some nuance to a character who could have been played with a much harder, vengeful edge. Messina brings the sense of his character’s confusion to life—You said we were going to do things together,” he says supportively, “and you torture him while I’m not here?”—while Kinnaman remains a cypher, a person who may or may not be the man Maja thinks he is. Each performance fits in place, creating a mosaic of truths and lies that is as compelling as it is confounding.
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 “Hellboy” starring David Harbour as Big Red, the stop-motion animated “Missing Link,” the Ethan Hawke bank heist “Stockholm.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including the reboot of “Hellboy” starring David Harbour as Big Red, the stop-motion animated “Missing Link,” the Ethan Hawke bank heist “Stockholm” and the kid-friendly “Mia and the White Lion” with CFRA Morning Rush host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
We’ve all heard the term Stockholm Syndrome. It refers to a hostage situation in which the captees come to sympathize or even identify with their captors. We’ve seen it in films like “Dog Day Afternoon,” “V for Vendetta” and even “King Kong.” But why is it called Stockholm Syndrome? Director Robert Budreau found out when he stumbled across “The Bank Drama” by Daniel Lang, a 1974 New Yorker article about a 1973 Swedish bank heist and hostage crisis that gave name to the phenomenon.
Ethan Hawke plays Lars Nystrom, a Swedish national raised in America. When he steps inside one of Sweden’s main banks, the Kreditbanken, armed with a machine gun and some bad intentions, he’s disguised, resembling Dennis Hopper circa “Easy Rider.” Gun blazing he orders everyone out of the bank save for tellers Bianca Lind (Noomi Rapace) and Klara Mardh (Bea Santos).
His plan is simple. He will hold the two women hostage until his best friend, legendary bank robber Gunnar Sorensson (Mark Strong), is released from jail, delivered to him and the two friends, with hostages in tow are allowed to leave in a Mustang GT. They’ll drive to a nearby dock, release Bianca and Klara, sail to France and never be seen again. If he doesn’t get what he wants he tells police he will kill the hostages and shoot his way out of the bank.
What the police don’t know is that Lars is all bluster, all talk and no walk. He’s never shot anyone and isn’t about to start now. Bianca, the more valuable of the hostages because she is a wife and a mom, senses Lars’s soft heart and begins to feel for his plight, even though he is the architect of their dire situation.
“Stockholm” has a bit of a damp fuse. The elements are all in place for a terrific thriller but they never gel. Hawke is a hoot as the more nerve than brains instigator and Rapace captures the compassion and desperation necessary for us to believe she could help the man holding her for ransom. The rest of the cast, Strong included, take a backseat, personality and interest wise.
Budreau mixes and matches Bianca’s rational perspective with Lars’s irrationality in a true opposites attract not-quite-love story. They are the spark that keeps “Stockholm” interesting.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the reboot of “Hellboy” starring David Harbour as Big Red, the stop-motion animated “Missing Link,” the Ethan Hawke bank heist “Stockholm” and the kid-friendly animal flick “Mia and the White Lion.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“Canada AM” film critic Richard Crouse looks at “Dolphin Tale 2” and “The Drop.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
