Posts Tagged ‘Robert Carlyle’

RICHARD’S CP24 WEEKEND REVIEWS & VIEWING TIPS! FRIDAY JULY 28, 2023.

I joined CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres.  Today we talk about the horror comedy “Haunted Mansion,” the dramedy “The Beanie Bubble,” season two of the Disney+ series “The Bear” and the Crave true crime docu-series “Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New Yor.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

CKTB NIAGARA REGION: THE TIM DENIS SHOW WITH RICHARD CROUSE ON MOVIES!

I sit in with CKTB morning show host Tim Denis to have a look at the horror comedy “Haunted Mansion,” the dramedy “the Beanie Bubble,” and the family dramas “Prisoner’s Daughter” and “North of Normal.”

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

CFRA IN OTTAWA: THE BILL CARROLL MORNING SHOW MOVIE REVIEWS!

I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the horror comedy “Haunted Mansion,” the dramedy “the Beanie Bubble,” and the family dramas “Prisoner’s Daughter” and “North of Normal.”

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY JULY 27, 2023.

I joined CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres.  Today we talk about the family friendly horror comedy “Haunted Mansion,” the family drama “Prisoner’s Daughter” and the dramedy “The Beanie Bubble.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

NORTH OF NORMAL: 3 STARS. “reveals hidden emotional scars.”

“North of Normal,” a new coming-of-age movie now playing in theatres, tells the unlikely, but true story of Cea Sunrise Person from her off-the-grid beginnings in the wilderness of Alberta and British Columbia to the runways of the fashion world.

Based on Person’s 2014 memoir, “North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Counterculture Family, and How I Survived Both,” the movie jumps in time between Cea’s upbringing in the flower power 1970s and her reunion, after a long break, with her free-spirited mother Michelle (Sarah Gadon) in the 1980s.

The story begins in Kootenay Plains, Alberta on a commune run by Micelle’s father “Papa Dick” (Robert Carlyle). Convinced that the “wilderness would solve all their problems,” the older man is a messianic figure firm in his rejection of the outside world. Michelle is 15 years-old- and pregnant with Cea, later played by River Price-Maenpaa as a child.

Cea’s (played as an adolescent and teen by Amanda Fix) life changes when Michelle, after an endless stream of boyfriends, moves them to the city to be with her latest beau. Thrown into a strange new world, Cea relies on Papa Dick’s philosophy—“Never give in to fear.”—and forges a new life, and security, for herself on the high fashion runways of New York and Paris.

“I’m not going to hang around and wait for the world to give me a good life,” she says. “I have a good face, and I’m going to use it.”

The long, strange trip of Person’s unconventional life is brought to life in a heartfelt, yet somewhat conventional film. Gadon embraces her character’s warmth, but also her unpredictability. Michelle isn’t a good mother, but she is Cea’s only support system, and their thorny bond is nicely wrought—warts and all.

“North of Normal” is a simple movie about a complicated relationship. It avoids most of the melodrama that could have flavored the story, although a hair cutting scene comes close, instead, choosing to allow the fine acting to reveal the hidden emotional scars of mother and daughter.

RICHARD’S CTV NEWSCHANNEL WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS & MORE FOR MAR 17.

Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the big weekend movies, the live action version of “Beauty and the Beast,” the drug addled “T2 Trainspotting” and the no-holds-barred “Goon: Last of the Enforcers.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

T2 TRAINSPOTTING: 4 STARS. “the world changes even if we don’t.”

Twenty-one years on from the full on frontal assault that was “Trainspotting,” the old gang is back together but the only things that truly binds them is a shared past. “You’re a tourist in your own youth,” says Sick Boy/Simon (Jonny Lee Miller).

At the center of it all is Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor). The last time we saw him he was a wastrel and double-crosser who cheated his friends out of £16,000 in a drug deal. After hightailing it to Amsterdam he’s now a fitness freak who spends more time running in a treadmill than running from the law.

His former friends, now all in their forties, are in various states of personal disrepair. “The wave of gentrification has yet to wash over us,” Simon quips.

Sick Boy/Simon is still a dodgy dude with a King Kong size Coke problem, who makes ends meet by blackmailing the wealthy customers of his prostitute business partner Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova).

Spud/Daniel (Ewen Bremner), still an impressive mash-up of ears, teeth and gangly limbs, is now a pathetic creature that chooses heroin addiction over a life with his wife Shirley Henderson) and child.

The fourth member of the group, Begbie (Robert Carlyle), he of the bad attitude and broken pint glasses to the face, is indisposed, locked up but with a way out and a gut full of hate for Renton.

Loosely based on author Irvine Welsh’s “Trainspotting” follow-up novel “Porno,” the new film from Danny Boyle, asks if it is ever possible to go home again—in this case Edinburgh—especially if home involves a dangerous psychopath with a grudge and an ex-BFF who wants revenge.

“T2 Trainspotting” does something quite remarkable. It places nostalgia in the rear view mirror while, at the same time, celebrating bygone days. To see Mark confront his past complete with the emotional attachments and entanglements that come along with it feels like a universal reckoning, a reminder that the world changes even if we don’t.

That’s the beating heart of the film, the rest is window dressing, It’s fun to hang out with these almost lovable villains for a couple more hours, to catch up on old times, immerse ourselves in their down-and-dirty lives and even get a new Choose Life riff but a heavy air of regret hangs over the proceedings. It reinforces the idea that we can’t relive the glory days no matter how hard we try. It’s a middle-age truism brought to vivid life by Boyle and cast.

In revisiting the past the director does, however, put an intimate spin on the story with clever visual integration of past memories—present day characters mournfully share the screen with their younger counterparts—and a melancholy sense that no matter how hard we try to move forward ultimately our lives are simply a continuation of everything that came before. As Renton says, “choose history repeating itself.” It’s not a thunderbolt revelation but revisiting these characters—particularly the tragicomic Spud—puts a face to those anchored in the nostalgia.

For fans of the original film “T2 Trainspotting” will be an enjoyable ride. It is as good a sequel to a classic film as you could hope for. It’s a shame the returning female characters played by Kelly MacDonald and Shirley Henderson are relegated to cameos and the original’s sense of infectious anarchy has been dulled somewhat but the film’s mix of redemption and regret are ample replacements.

CHECK IT OUT: RICHARD’S “HOUSE OF CROUSE” PODCAST EPISODE 38!

Screen Shot 2015-06-30 at 1.42.28 PMWelcome to the House of Crouse. This week Robert Carlyle gives us news on the upcoming Trainspotting sequel while Canadian news legend Peter Mansbridge tells us how he joined the ranks of Mickey Mouse, Jiminy Cricket and Aladdin and became a Disney character in Zootopia.

 

 

 

 

Metro: Robert Carlyle in big screen adaptation of ‘gleefully macabre’ novel.

Screen Shot 2016-03-02 at 9.04.23 AMBy Richard Crouse – Metro Canada

The Legend of Barney Thomson is a movie Robert Carlyle was almost destined to make. The Once Upon a Time star not only plays the lead character, he directed the Scottish black comedy about an awkward barber who unwittingly becomes a serial killer.

“I was offered this four or five times purely as an actor over a period of five or six years,” he says. “I was over here in Vancouver working and a friend of mine said he had a Scottish script that I might be interested in. I said, ‘Of course I’ll read it,’ and it was that again. I can’t get away from it.”

The script is based on The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson by Douglas Lindsay, a novel The Scotsman described as “gleefully macabre.”

Carlyle, a Maryhill, Glasgow native, liked the screenplay but says, “there were certain aspects of Glasgow culture that were missing from it.”

“In Glasgow we have a way of speaking to one another that is kind of harsh. That was missing.”

He drew from personal experience to find Glasgow sites that “fitted in with Barney’s life.”

“A lot of the locations you see in the film like the Barrowland Ballroom are places that are kind of dying and might not be around for much longer so I thought this was an interesting way of documenting some of these places.”

Initially he signed on only as an actor but soon found himself doing double duty.

“Believe me when I say, it certainly wasn’t my idea. I don’t know if (the idea) came from the financiers or not. I can’t remember but from whichever source it came from it seemed to be an interesting hook to hang this on that not only was I going to be in it but direct it also. That enthused the financiers.”

The first time feature film director says he took his lead for the tone of the movie from the book and the script.

“Let’s not have the camera moving around and spinning around in circles. Let’s spend the time on the performances and not the camera angles, which you end up cutting anyway.”

He recruited an all-star cast, including Sir Tom Courtney, Ray Winstone and his old Trainspotting cast mate James Cosmo. In a casting coup, he hired two time Oscar winner Emma Thompson to play against type as Barney’s monstrous mom.

“Many, many years ago at the beginning of my career she did a piece on Scotland TV called Tutti Frutti,” he says. “She’s played a Scot in that, from Glasgow. I thought, ‘She’s remarkable. I thought she was English.’ Then suddenly I realized, she is English and just did this terrific accent. There’s not many English people who can do a Scottish accent that well.”

The Legend of Barney Thomson has already won Best Picture at the Scottish BAFTAs and Carlyle is keeping busy on the small screen as Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin on Once Upon a Time.

It’s his next project, however, that has the Internet buzzing. In May he’ll reprise the role of the pint glass-wielding psychopath Francis Begbie in the sequel to Trainspotting alongside the film’s original director and cast.

“We were all very emotional when we read it,” he says, “even Danny (Boyle), because these four characters have followed us around for twenty years. Where ever I go people are talking about Begbie. It is very close to us.”