CTV ATLANTIC: RICHARD AND TODD BATTIS ON NEW MOVIES IN THEATRES!
I join CTV Atlantic anchor Todd Battis to talk about the swords and sandals of “Gladiator II,” the origin story of “Wicked” and the WWII drama “Blitz.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Posts Tagged ‘Ridley Scott’
CKTB NIAGARA REGION: THE STEPH VIVIER SHOW WITH RICHARD CROUSE ON MOVIES!
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Steph Vivier to have a look at movies in theatres and streaming including the swords and sandals of “Gladiator II,” the origin story of “Wicked” and the WWII drama “Blitz.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
BOOZE & REVIEWS: SWORDS, SANDALS AND GLADIATOR GATORADE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for Booze & Reviews! This week we have a look at the sword and sandal epic “Gladiator II” and the drink that made real life gladiators fit to fight!
Listen to Booze & Reviews HERE! (Starts at 21:08)
Listen to the entertainment headlines, including the details on Netflix’s deal with Beyoncé HERE! (Starts at 10:48)
GLADIATOR II: 2 ½ STARS. “Come to see a man bite a monkey, stay for Denzel Washington!”
SYNOPSIS: In “Gladiator II,” director Ridley Scott’s long-gestating sequel to his 2000 blockbuster of almost the same name, Paul Mescal plays Lucius, former heir to the Roman Empire, now forced to battle in the Colosseum after his home is invaded by General Marcus Acacius on the orders of Rome’s syphilitic, power-hungry emperors Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) and Geta (Joseph Quinn).
CAST: Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Lior Raz, Derek Jacobi, Connie Nielsen, and Denzel Washington. Directed by Ridley Scott.
REVIEW: Come to see a man bite a monkey, stay for Denzel Washington’s deliciously devious villain.
The follow-up to Best Picture Oscar winner “Gladiator” is long on spectacle—Lucius not only battles giant monkeys, but also sharks and a huge, bloodthirsty rhino—but short on soul. It is loud and proud but the emotional connectivity offered by the original film, and specifically Russell Crowe’s performance, gets lost in this new translation.
The story of corruption, loyalty, birthright, vengeance and angry fighting animals is lavish and epic, but it isn’t much fun.
The set pieces in the Colosseum deliver big CGI action, there’s a fake severed head (a practical effect that makes the infamous rubber baby in Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” look photorealistic) and throngs of soldiers for as far as the eye can see. It is epic filmmaking on a grand scale, but it’s missing adrenaline, that hit of dopamine that gives you a rush.
The opening battle scene and the abovementioned monkey bite are rousing, but after that the movie gets bogged down, not with plot—that’s relatively simple—but with heroic banter and political intrigue.
Paul Mescal, as Lucius, son of Russell Crowe’s character Maximus Decimus Meridius from the first film, takes pains to differentiate himself from Crowe’s Oscar winning performance. His gladiator is pensive, weighed down by the death of his warrior wife at the end of an arrow fired by Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal). Mescal is charismatic but in his quest for vengeance, he’s tasked with delivering a series of heroic speeches, none of which are as memorable as Crowe’s “Are you not entertained?” declaration.
Pascal’s gets the job done as the conflicted Roman general Marcus Acacius. He’s a warrior, but fears Rome is headed in the wrong direction under the sadistic twin emperors, Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) and Geta (Joseph Quinn).
Both hand in fine performances, but then, into the mix, comes Denzel Washington. It’s a supporting role, but he’s here for a good time, not a long time. As Macrinus, a wealthy former slave with a plan to control Rome, he gives the film some bounce, some real personality.
As the villain of the piece, his cunning would put Machiavelli to shame. He’s a master chess player, moving everyone around as though they are pawns in his devilish game. His scenes are the film’s most memorable, and remember, this is in a movie where the lead character bites a monkey!
Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II” has sword and sandal sequelitis. It’s bigger, louder and longer than the original film, but more, in this case, doesn’t mean better.
NAPOLEON: 3 STARS. “an unexpected portrayal of Napoleon Bonaparte.”
Director Ridley Scott and star Joaquin Phoenix team to present a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte you are unlikely to find in any history book. Both epic and intimate, “Napoleon,” now playing in theatres before moving to Apple TV+, chips away at the character’s historical veneer to reveal an insecure, lovesick, petulant, pompous man with an emperor complex.
Covering roughly twenty years, the film begins in 1789 with the beheading of Marie Antoinette, the queen who lost her head during the French Revolution as the people rose up to abolish the monarchy. In the crowd is Napoleon Bonaparte (Phoenix), a young Corsican soldier with a plan to reclaim the port of Toulon by forcing the Anglo-Spanish fleet to withdraw. It is his first great triumph, revealing his strategic genius and setting him on a path to become the Emperor of France. “I’m not built like other men,” he says.
The small man in his ever-present, big bicorne hat has none of the social graces of French aristocracy, but his power gets him noticed by Josephine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby), a widow whose upper-crust husband fell victim to France’s Reign of Terror. For Napoleon, it’s love at first sight, for her, it’s an opportunity that may one day be accompanied by real feelings. “Has the course of my life just changed, Napoleon?” she asks seductively when they first meet.
Despite not being able to produce an heir and very publicly cuckolding her husband, Josephine has a tight grip on Napoleon’s emotions. “You’re just a tiny little brute that is nothing without me. Say it,” she commands as he nods in agreement. Emotionally she is every bit the tactician as her spouse is on the battlefield and Kirby nails both her ruthlessness and her vulnerabilities.
When his dreams of controlling Europe incur massive loss of life on the battlefield, Napoleon finds himself exiled from the country and woman he loves.
It is hard to decipher exactly what Scott and Phoenix had in mind for “Napoleon.” The battle scenes are undeniably epic, shot on a grand scale while retaining the up-close-and-personal horrors of war. The Battle of Austerlitz sequence, in particular, is horrifying in its execution, brilliant in its design. Scott’s camera captures not only the ambush on a frozen lake, but the cunning mind it took to plan and implement a mission of that size. It’s the kind of thing that could reasonably be expected from the director given the subject.
Less expected is the portrayal of Napoleon, which often borders on satire. The obvious cliches are avoided—he is never seen slipping his hand into his coat, for example—but other choices make for choppy viewing. The general who is a strongman in battle, is also played for laughs in several scenes and I can’t figure out whether the humor is intentional or not.
When he flees the French Directory, the staid committee that governed France until November 1799, his physicality and shrieks of, “They’re trying to kill me,” are more Benny Hill than battleground hero. During another kind of battle, a food fight with Josephine, he throws a hunk of meat her way, bellowing, “Destiny has brought me this lamb chop.” Later, he “seduces” his wife with an odd humming sound that is the opposite of sexy.
Those playful, lighter scenes are intermittently entertaining, but feel at odds with the impassive warrior portrayed in the rest of the film. Perhaps the rumored four hour cut, slated to stream on Apple TV+ after the theatrical run, will add more context, but as it is, these scenes give the two-hour-forty-five-minute theatrical cut a choppy, inconsistent feel as its main character flip flops between stoicism, emotional openness and frivolity.
“Napoleon” will not be accused of being a reverent depiction of its subject, but neither will it be regarded as the definitive portrayal.
DEATH ON THE NILE: 3 STARS. “a knotty mystery that only Poirot can untie.”
In the whodunnit genre few names loom larger than Agatha Christie. The author of 66 novels and 14 short story collections was known as the Mistress of Mystery and holds a Guinness World Record as the best-selling fiction writer of all time.
Her books are the fuel for countless stage plays, television shows and movies, but the spark that make the novels so entertaining often goes missing in translation.
It speaks volumes that the best Christie movie of late, “Knives Out,” isn’t an adaptation of her work. It borrows the mechanics of her best stories, including the climatic singling out of the murderer in a roomful of suspects, to make the most enjoyable movie tribute to her style in years and that includes Kenneth Branagh’s 2017 thriller “Murder on the Orient Express,” which is actually based on a Christie classic.
The director takes a second kick at the Christie can with “Death on the Nile,” an adaptation of the writer’s best-selling 1937 mystery of jealousy, wealth and death.
The film begins with a flashback to World War I and the origin of Belgian soldier Hercule Poirot’s (Branagh) flamboyant moustache.
Cut to 1937. Poirot, now a world-renowned detective, is on vacation in Egypt aboard the lavishly appointed ship S.S. Karnak. Also aboard are heiress Linnet (Gal Gadot) and her new husband Simon (Armie Hammer), a glamourous, honeymooning couple cruising the Nile in an effort to hide from the jealous Jacqueline (Emma Mackey), who happens to be Linnet’s jealous former friend and Simon’s ex-lover. Jacqueline has other plans, however, and comes along for the ride. “It’s indecent,” says Simon. “She’s making a fool of herself.”
Linnet fears that Jacqueline is up to no good and reaches out to Poirot to look out for her safety on the ship. “Maybe Jacqueline hasn’t committed a crime yet,” she says, “but she will. She always settles her scores.”
When Linnet turns up dead, Jacqueline is the obvious suspect, but she has a rock-solid alibi.
So who could the killer be? Is it Linnet’s former fiancé Linus Windlesham (a very subdued Russell Brand)? Jazz singer Salome Otterbourne (Sophie Okonedo)? Maybe it’s Marie Van Schuyler (Jennifer Saunders), Linnet’s Communist godmother or Rosalie Otterbourne (Letitia Wright) Linnet’s old classmate.
Only one person can get to the bottom of the matter. “I am Detective Hercule Poirot and I will deliver your killer.”
“He’s a bloodhound,” says Rosalie, “so let him sniff.”
“Death on the Nile” has an old-fashioned Hollywood epic feel to it. There’s glamour, beautiful costumes and even more beautiful people set against an exotic backdrop shot with sweeping, expensive looking crane shots over CGI pyramids. There are, as they used to say, more stars than there are in the heavens populating the screen and a knotty mystery that only Poirot can untie.
It also feels old fashioned in its storytelling. Branagh takes his time setting the scene, adding in two prologues before landing in Egypt. It takes almost an hour to get to the sleuthing and the weaving together of the clues and the characters. The leisurely pace sucks much of the immediacy out of the story, and despite all the moving parts, the mystery isn’t particularly intriguing.
More intriguing is Branagh’s take on Poirot. On film the detective has often been played as the object of fun, and while the character’s ego, persnickety personality and quirky moustache are very much on display, but here he is a serious man, heartbroken and brimming with regret. We learn how the death of a loved one changed him, turning him into the man we see today. It’s a new take on the crime solver that breathes some new life into the character’s lungs.
Then there is the pyramid in the room. Yes, Armie Hammer, the bland slab of a leading man, has a large role in the action. He is so interwoven into the movie that he couldn’t be cut out, à la Kevin Spacey in “All the Money in the World,” despite his recent scandals. At any rate, despite having one of the larger roles, he doesn’t make much of an impression.
“Death on the Nile’s” high style and all-star murder mystery may please Agatha Christie aficionados but it could use a little more of the “Knives Out” vibe to make it feel less old fashioned and conventional.
NEWSTALK 1010: BOOZE AND REVIEWS WITH RICHARD CROUSE ON THE RUSH!
Richard joins guest host Tamara Cherry and Jay Michaels of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show The Rush for Booze and Reviews! Today he talks about Rob Roy, the drink, not the movie, and reviews the Disney+ doc “The Beatles: Get Back,” the animated “Encanto” and Lady Gaga in “House of Gucci.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
HOUSE OF GUCCI: 4 STARS. “plays like a high fashion soap opera.”
“I want to see where this story goes,” says Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) in the early moments of “House of Gucci,” the new dynastic family drama from director Ridley Scott now playing in theatres.
I don’t blame her. It is quite a story.
A Machiavellian mix of love, in-fighting, ambition, fake Guccis, and income tax fraud, “House of Gucci” is almost as outrageous as the accent Jared Leto adopts to play Paolo Gucci, the wannabe designer and, according to his Uncle Rodolfo Gucci (Jeremy Irons), “triumph of mediocrity,” who helped create Gucci’s famous double “G” logo.
But is the inspired-by-a-true story movie as attention-grabbing as the designs that made Gucci a household name?
The story begins with a meet cute between Patrizia, a twenty-something who works for her father’s transportation company, and Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), the sweetly naïve grandson of Guccio Gucci, founder of the fashion house House of Gucci, and son of actor and designer Rodolfo.
Rodolfo doesn’t approve of Patrizia—“The Reggiani’s are truck drivers!” he snarls—but Maurizio is smitten, and, even at the risk of being written out of his father’s will, marries her at a lavish ceremony where the Gucci side of the church is noticeably empty.
In the beginning they are happy. Maurizio, who has been disowned by his father, is as awkward as Patrizia is confident and when Uncle Aldo Gucci (Al Pacino), who owns 50% of the company, appears in their life, she turns on the charm. “Strong family,” she says, “makes strong business.”
Maurizio is wary of getting involved in the family trade. He doesn’t like the pomp and circumstance that goes along with the name—“We’re not royalty,” he says—and he’s happy doing his own thing, but his wife tries to orchestrate a new era at Gucci, regardless of the strife it will cause in the family.
Soon Maurizio is in charge, the family is at war and cracks begin to show in Patrizia and Maurizio’s marriage. As resentments grows, Maurizio scolds his wife, “The only thing I need from you is to stay away from Gucci before you cause any more damage.” He also distances himself from her personally, beginning an affair with Paola Franchi (Camille Cottin). Divorce looms and, as her anger turns lethal, Patrizia hires a hitman.
“House of Gucci” is one of the rare, recent two-and-a-half-hour movies that earns its running time. Equal parts serious and satirical, it isn’t perfect, but the story of high style betrayal is entertaining. Gaga and Driver have great chemistry and anchor the movie’s chaotic plotting and flights of fancy. I’m looking at you Jared Leto. But more on that later.
As Patrizia, Gaga brings the goods. Simultaneously sweetly charming and ferociously ambitious, she is Gina Lollobrigida mixed with Lady Macbeth, and her performance provides many of the movie’s best moments.
Maurizio’s journey from idealistic to cold-hearted capitalist is handled nicely by Driver and Pacino adds some spice to Uncle Aldo, but the performance everyone will be talking about, for better and for worse, belongs to Leto.
The Oscar winner, known for his transformational roles, is almost unrecognizable as the too- dumb-to-know-how-dumb-he-is Paolo. Looking as though he’s auditioning for the Italian language version of the “Jeffrey Tambor Story,” he is heightened to the point of parody. Paolo longs to be a designer, but is stymied by his lack of talent and judgement. No one will accuse Leto of having no talent, not at all, but some may question his judgement. It may be tough to deliver lines like, “I could finally soar… like a pigeon,” but Leto digs in, chewing the scenery like every line will be his last meal. It’s entertaining, but tips the scales from serious drama to satire in a way Sir. Ridley may not have intended.
With some uneven storytelling, bigger-than-life performances and wealth porn, “House of Gucci” sometimes plays like a high fashion soap opera, but like soap operas, it knows how to keep its audience coming back for more.
ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD: 3 ½ STARS. “handsomely made, if not terribly deep.”
“All the Money in the World,” a new true crime drama from director Ridley Scott, unwittingly became a talking point in the #MeToo conversation when disgraced star Kevin Spacey was disappeared from the film, replaced by Christopher Plummer. The ripped-from-the-headlines tale of ageing oil tycoon J. Paul Getty’s refusal to pay any ransom after his grandson’s kidnapping made headlines itself for the eleventh hour recasting. Question is, was the all the trouble worth it?
Set in 1975, the film begins with a pulse racing sequence that sees sixteen-year-old John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer, no relation to his co-star) plucked from the streets of Rome and thrown into a van by the Communist Red Brigade kidnapping gang lead by Cinquanta (Romain Duris). The family patriarch, tetchy tightwad J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer), denies the Calabrian mob’s demand for a $17 million ransom, in part because he suspects his grandson may have had a role in planning his own abduction and, more importantly, because he feels he’ll become an ATM machine (although they didn’t exist yet) for every kidnapper brave enough to scoop up one of his 14 grandkids. “My Gramps wasn’t just the richest man in the world,” explains Getty III, “he was the richest man in the history of the world.”
Months later the stakes are raised all round when Getty III’s severed ear shows up in the mail. As former CIA agent Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg) investigates—“Bring him back as quickly and inexpensively as you can,” he is told.—the young Getty’s mother, Gail Harris (Michelle Williams) appeals to Getty senior’s better nature.
Based on the book “Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty” by John Pearson, “All the Money in the World” is a handsomely made, if not terribly deep, thriller. Scott can stage an action scene and build tension but the real star here is Plummer. As “the old one with the money” he hands in the second example this year after “the Man Who Invented Christmas” as to why he was perhaps born to play Ebenezer Scrooge. The sensational aspect of the casting aside, he hands in a performance that is one part doddering grandpa, one part cold-blooded shark. When he says, “There’s very little in life worth paying full price for,” in reference to his grandson it sounds like something your grandfather might have said. When he refuses to pay the ransom until he realizes it could be a tax deduction, it sends a chill down the spine.
Wahlberg doesn’t fare as well. He may be the film’s biggest star but he’s miscast as the calculating ex-CIA agent. Williams is better, all compassion and determination.
By the end credits it’s obvious that “All the Money in the World” isn’t simply a real life crime story but a timely gaze into the lives of the super rich. “We look like you,” says Getty III, “but we are not like you.”
