Richard joins NewsTalk 1010’s “Moore in the Morning” host John Moore to talk about AMC theatres bumping up the price for “The Batman” tickets this weekend.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
On some level Batman has always been escapist entertainment. The comics, TV shows and movies have always tackled big topics like morality, vengeance and the razor’s edge between anarchy and order but between Adam West’s grin, Michael Keaton’s gadgets and Christian Bale’s colorful foes, escapism is always part of the mix.
“The Batman,” starring Robert Pattison as the Caped Crusader, and now playing in theatres, is three hours of entertaining Bataction but the real-world themes of distrust in elected officials, our constitutions and each other, provide anything but escapism.
The story begins on Halloween night, as costumed criminals swarm Gotham City. As chaos reigns on the streets, the Bat-Signal illuminates the sky. “When the light hits the sky it’s not just a beacon,” says Batman (Pattison), “it’s a warning… to them. Fear is a tool.”
It’s a tool Batman uses effectively. His masked presence, his fists of fury and habit of snarling, “I’m vengeance,” have made him a fearsome presence in Gotham City. The rank-and-file police don’t know what to make of the Caped Crusader, but Detective James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) sees him as an asset, particularly when high ranking city officials begin dying at the hands of The Riddler (Paul Dano), a psychopath whose costume suggests he is a fan of the Gimp from “Pulp Fiction.”
At each grisly murder the Riddler leaves behind a cutesy card for Batman, inscribed with a riddle, like “What does a liar do when he dies?” that could serve as a clue to solve the crime.
As the evidence, and the bodies, pile up, Batman’s investigation leads him to a wide-ranging conspiracy involving a local crime boss (John Turturro), his minion Oswald Cobblepot a.k.a. The Penguin (Colin Farrell doing a pretty good impression of James Gandolfini), a long-held Wayne family secret and nightclub worker and cat burglar Selina Kyle a.k.a. Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz).
“The Batman’s” almost three-hour running time may seem daunting, particularly in the wake of several overly long superhero movies that haven’t delivered the goods. I’m happy to report that director Matt Reeves has crafted a movie that flies by in the bat of an eye.
This is not an origin story, that tale has been told over and over. It is more of a coming-of-age tale. As played by Pattison, Bruce Wayne is a dour and sour hero who, when asked, “Are you hideously scarred?” replies “Yeah.” His scars, however, are all on the inside.
He is driven by a sense of vengeance to clean up the streets of the kind of people who killed his parents. That, he says, is his legacy, not the fabulously wealth of Wayne Enterprises. As the story progresses his mood doesn’t change—it’s as if Pattison’s perfect cheekbones would shatter if he ever cracks a smile—but his outlook does. Batman may be the face of vengeance, but by the time the end credits roll, he realizes hope trumps vengeance. “People need hope,” he says. “To know someone is out there for them. The city is angry. The city won’t change, but I have to try.”
After five “Twilight” movies Pattison understands how to brood on screen. He is comfortable with the stillness the character requires, which works well to emphasize the Batman’s loner status. The stillness of the character, when he isn’t running, jumping or jackhammering a bad guy, suggests a calm but that sense is betrayed by the simmering rage behind Pattison’s eyes. It is that anger that gives him an unspoken reason to exist.
This is a Batman who is still figuring things out, who is fueled by his single-minded need for revenge, but working to funnel his energies in a way that will benefit him, the people he loves and Gotham City. He doesn’t have superpowers, just a powerful drive and a handful of gadgets. He’s a one-man army, and Pattison does a good job of showing us, not telling us, the complexity of the character.
Director Reeves has stripped away much of the slickness of the Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder films in favor of a grittier vision. Think 1970s movies like “Chinatown,” “The French Connection” or “Taxi Driver.” Reeves has made a boiled down detective noir that scales back the theatrics of previous versions to concentrate on the personal stuff.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t action to spare. The new Batmobile, now a muscle car, makes its debut in a wild car chase and Pattison’s Batman doesn’t kill people, unlike Affleck’s take on the character, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t willing to pummel the heck out of his adversaries.
“The Batman” is an interesting new direction for the Caped Crusader movies. There have been better villains in other films and the sins of the father angle has been explored before, but this movie captures the zeitgeist in a very interesting way. It confronts hot button topics like the alt right, agents of chaos and lying politicians, issues ripped from the headlines, but is tempered with a message of hope, of rebuilding belief in the world around us.
I suppose every generation gets the Batman they deserve. Our hard knock world has delivered us a Batman with an edge; a troubled hero who almost succumbs to his worst tendencies, but, in the end, looks toward a horizon of hope. It’s a powerful message for our world gone mad, particularly when it comes from a guy in a mask.
Calling all emerging, aspiring at home filmmakers; this challenge is for you. Christopher Nolan’s feature films are known to be cherished, cinematic experiences, guaranteeing the next project by the visionary auteur will be an event like no other.
Watch Richard on “Your Morning” for the details.
As with any Christopher Nolan film, there’s much to unpack and we want to see how you interpret the concept of time for a chance at a major prize.
Do you see time as forward, backward, looping or something else entirely? Grab your camera or phone and create a 55-second video for the Inspired by Tenet National Filmmaker Contest that shows your skills as a filmmaker. The most inventive, exciting entry, as chosen by CTV film critic Richard Crouse, will win $10,000, debut nationally on etalk and be featured in the Cineplex Pre-Show in theatres across Canada. Whether you grab your family to create a fully-produced, time travel epic, or your dog for a looping video of cuteness, all you have to do is show how you interpret time.
“We’re living in a twilight world.” That’s the password The Protagonist (John David Washington) and Company use in “Tenet,” the new Christopher Nolan mind-bender, now playing only in theatres, but the movie’s premise is more “Twilight Zone” than twilight world.
The movie opens with a breathless and loud rescue sequence in an opera house in Ukraine, the first of the movie’s several eye-and-ear-popping action sequences. At stake is a mysterious component, part of a much larger device, with the power to end the world. A nuclear holocaust? “No, something worse.”
The Protagonist is tasked with piecing together the potentially world ending puzzle. “Your duty transcends national interest,” says his handler Victor (Martin Donovan). All he has to go on is a gesture and a code word, Tenet. “It will open some of the right doors,” Victor says, “but some of the wrong ones too.”
So far, “Tenet” feels like an elaborate James Bond style story, complete with exotic locations, enigmatic characters and a world that needs saving.
Then things get complicated.
The Protagonist isn’t simply dealing with the usual spy stuff, like international intrigue, a Russian oligarch or femme fatales. He’s fighting against “inversion,” a disturbance in the very fabric of time, that sees material running backwards through time, while the rest of the world moves forward. So, in the upside-down story of “Tenet,” an “inverted” weapon could affect the past as well as the present.
It’s a reversal of the way we think of linear time. It’s not time travel. The Protagonist doesn’t jump back to ancient Egypt for a quick chat with Cleopatra or zip forward to talk to his 100-year-old self. When he inverts, he is in the moment, but running counter to everyone else. “You’re not shooting the bullet,” he’s told by a researcher (Clémence Poésy). “You’re catching it.” Then, by way of clarity, she adds, “don’t try and understand it,” which may be the best advice The Protagonist has received to this point.
Teamed with shadowy operative Neil (Robert Pattinson), The Protagonist enters a topsy-turvy world of high-end art, down-and-dirty dealings with strongman Andrei Stor (Kenneth Branagh) and a clock that is moving backwards and forwards simultaneously. “You have a future in the past,” Neil says to The Protagonist.
At the centre of the action is John David Washington, hot off his Golden Globe Best Actor nomination for “BlacKkKlansman.” He’s in every scene, and whether wearing a Brooks Brother suit (in one of the film’s funniest exchanges) or hanging off the side of a building, he’s a convincing action hero with acting chops. It’s a demanding role and he pulls it off with equal parts bravado and restraint. It takes swagger to anchor a movie like this but in his relationship with Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) he reveals a flirtier, more tender side. The protagonist is a well-rounded character and, if they don’t do a “Tenet 2: Time Gone Wild” perhaps his name could be added to the list of 007 candidates.
The supporting cast, Branagh as the “all our lives in his hands” villain and Debicki as his beleaguered wife and Pattinson as the calm, cool and collected mercenary, all acquit themselves well but “Tenet’s” real star, however, is Christopher Nolan.
For blockbuster starved audiences Nolan delivers the kind of spectacle we’re used to seeing in the summer months. As per usual, he avoids CGI wherever possible in favor of practical effects. The results are eye-popping. The big set pieces—like an airplane driving through a building—don’t have the kind of digital disconnect that often comes with computer generated action. The show-stopping sequences are busy, exciting but most of all, organic, and the sense of peril (and pageantry) that comes with that is undeniable. Add to that Nolan’s use of IMAX cameras and you have wild action that fills the big screen in every way.
With a complicated story comes drawbacks. In the first hour there is a lot of exposition. People ask questions—Do you know what a free port is? How does inversion work?—while others take the time to answer them all in an effort to keep the audience in the loop. There’s a lot of talk about theories and plans but Nolan keeps things lively with lightning fast—with a capital “F”— pacing.
Will you understand the puzzles of “Tenet’s” time manipulation story? Maybe, maybe not. It’s definitely a movie that will hold up to multiple viewings, revealing new info and fostering more understanding of the plot each time. The trippy last hour is jam packed with artfully arranged action scenes that manipulate time in increasingly psychedelic ways. While you may feel lost in time as the movie careens toward the end of its 150-minute running time with an involved and inversive climax that weaves the past into the fabric of The Protagonist’s mission, you may wish you could invert time and relive the story again. And you can, for the price of a ticket.
“Tenet” opens in over 70 countries worldwide, including Europe and Canada, starting on Wednesday, August 26.
Richard walks you through the new Christopher Nolan movie “Tenet.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“The Lighthouse,” an expressionist nightmare captured in shadows and light by director Robert Eggers, is a period piece that pits Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson against the primal forces of paranoia and pathological behavior.
Set in 1890’s era New England on a remote rock that is home to a lighthouse and nothing else, the films sees “wickies” Thomas Wake (Dafoe) and Efraim Winslow (Pattinson) thrown together to keep the giant oil lamp lit, warning seafaring boats of dangerous waters. Wake is a seadog, a craggy old character who has spent his life on the ocean or at the watchtower. “I’m damn well wedded to this light and she’s a better wife than any woman.” Winslow is a drifter who signed on for the job of apprentice when he heard you could make as much as $1000 a year. He’s replacing a man who was driven mad by the isolation. “He believed the lamp was enchanted,” says Wake. “that in the light was salvation for sins.”
The two men are oil and sea water. Winslow resents Wake’s stern ways. Wake feels the newbie is soft, unable to get the job done. On top of that, Winslow won’t swill whiskey with the older man at dinner and doesn’t understand the superstitions and customs that seafarers hold dear.
The strained atmosphere grows as Winslow begins to have visions. He sees a mermaid on the island’s rugged shoreline and wonders why Wake locks the door behind him whenever he tends the lamp. What is he hiding up there?
As the end of their four-week hitch looms the two men vie of control of the claustrophobic lighthouse, run out of booze and switch to kerosene, slowly driving one another mad. “The boredom,” says Wake, “makes seamen evil.” Well, that and booze, loneliness and toxic masculinity.
“The Lighthouse” has the feel of a silent movie. Eggers shoots grainy black and white in boxy old school 1.19:1 aspect ratio, drawing on the paintings of gothic painter Jean Delville and others to expertly creates the look and feel of nineteenth century New England mariner life. Madness seems to lurk in the shadows, in the inky corners of the frame, just out of sight. With a mermaid’s (Valeriia Karaman) siren song ringing in his ears Winslow inches toward insanity, bringing Wake along for the ride.
The actors are in virtually every frame and both fully embrace the odd story. DaFoe embodies Wake, looking like a Royal Doulton Old Salt mug come to life, speaking like a character right out of Melville. You can almost smell the rum breath as he berates Winslow, spitting out orders like the captain of a pirate ship.
Pattinson builds Winslow brick by brick. He starts the movie quietly, an inward character who doesn’t say much or do much except for the grunt work he’s ordered to do. Soon, however, his physical performance turns inward, exploring the manifestations of his madness and it is very powerful. His character has an arc that is both bizarre and powerful in its exploration of toxicity and loneliness. Winslow has several explosive scenes and the last image of him is one that, once seen, will not be soon forgotten.
Despite the presence of two very popular actors “The Lighthouse” is not exactly a mainstream movie. Instead it is more of an expertly rendered gothic slow burn that brings with it an atmosphere of dread shrouds the film like fog rolling into shore.
There will be some debate as to whether or not “High Life,” a new space opera from director Claire Denis, can be classified as sci fi or not. It takes place on a starship, is set in the outer reaches of the solar system and features other sci fi faves like black holes and space stations but the setting almost takes a back seat to the very earth-bound humanity on display.
Robert Pattinson plays Monte, one of a group of death row convicts sent on a suicide mission to deep space aboard a space station. When we first meet Monte he’s alone save for his infant daughter Willow (Scarlett Lindsey). Soon, via flashbacks, we learn more about the situation, the social breakdown with the other passengers and Dibs (Juliette Binoche), the supervising doctor who performs sexual experiments on the crew, as the space station hurtles toward the abyss of a giant black hole.
There are certainly sci fi aspects to “High Life” but all the molecular clouds and the spacey instances of spaghettification (look it up), etc are trumped by, I want to say drama, but that’s not quite accurate. There isn’t much drama to be milked from a story where the characters are in lock down with little or no room for growth. There are some good performances here, particularly from Pattinson as a man who survives through discipline, and Binoche whose cold, clinical obsession to create new life borders on the sadistic, but the film is more about creating atmosphere than forming dramatic moments.
Denis is unafraid to linger on a moment, to allow the incremental passing of time aboard the ship to be reflected in the film’s pacing. Sometimes it works, offering a glimpse into the mundane lives of people for whom there is no future, but often it feels as though time has stood still and not in a good way. Add to that pages of whispered expository dialogue and you’re left with a film that maintains a sense of hope that Monte and Willow will be OK but doesn’t give us much of a reason to care what happens to them.
With “Good Time” Robert Pattinson may finally have put a stake through the heart of his most famous character. The man formerly known as “Twilight’s” sexy vampire sheds Edward Cullen’s glittery to play the reckless brother of an imprisoned man. The former heartthrob has taken creative risks before in his work with David Cronenberg but with the gritty “Good Time” has finally found the kind of critical reaction his ex co-star Kristen Stewart has been basking in for years since their franchise flew off into the night.
The action in “Good Time” stems from two brothers, Nik and Constantine Nikas, played by co-director Ben Safdie and Pattinson respectively. They live with their grandmother, but fledgling criminal Connie’s main job is looking out for Nik who struggles with a learning disability. “It’s just you and me,” Connie says. “I’m your friend. Alright?”
The ill-advised bank robbery goes south when a paint bomb hiding in the cash explodes covering them in red dye and landing Nik in jail. Connie plots to get raise the $10,000 bail needed to spring his brother out of Rikers Island hospital. “I’ve got to get him out of there before something bad happens,” says Connie. “He could get killed in there.” As the night grows longer Connie’s situation becomes complicated and dangerous.
Co-directors Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie are not action directors. They shoot in tights close ups, building tension instead with a propulsive electronic score by Oneohtrix Point Never (a.k.a. Daniel Lopatin) mixed with tightly edited visuals. The result is anxiety inducing, occasionally darkly funny and unrelentingly grim. There is an “After Hours” vibe to “Good Time”—the action takes place in one evening escalating with every passing moment—but it’s violent and intense, the opposite of a feel good movie.
Pattinson embodies every scuzzy synapse of Connie. Nonviolent, kind hearted even—“ You’ve got to change this. I don’t want to see them justify this,” he says after watching a TV show were police violently take down a suspect.—but dangerous Connie is compelling because of his desperation. As the situation spirals out of control Connie, driven by need to protect his brother, makes mistake after mistake.
You can practically smell him cigarette breath and flop sweat in a career high that really captures the late night desperation of a man on a mission.
Also strong in a role that amounts to little more than an extended cameo, Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Connie’s girlfriend, an hysterical woman just a step or two away from the reality of the situation. In her brief time on screen she makes an impression, adding to the story’s chaotic feel.
“Good Time” is the movie equivalent of a panic attack, nasty around the edges and rattling to the brain.
“The Lost City of Z” is an epic true-to-life tale of adventure and intrigue. Based on the book of the same name by David Grann it stars Charlie Hunnam as a determined explorer who obsession with the Amazon led to his mysterious disappearance.
Hunnam, who will soon be seen playing another legendary character in “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword,” is Colonel Percy Fawcett, a man convinced of the existence of a lost city deep in the Amazon. When he discovers pottery, evidence of an advanced civilization in the region, he is ridiculed by the scientific establishment who hang on to old-fashioned ideas about indigenous populations. “Your exploits have opened every door for you,” he’s told, “but keep your ideas to yourself. It is one thing to celebrate the people it’s another to elevate them.” At a boisterous Royal Geographical Society meeting he says, “If we can find a city where one was for not to be able to exist we could rewrite history,” only to be drowned out by dismissive chants of, “Pots and pans! Pots and pans!” from his peers.
Determined to prove his theory he returns, aide-de-camp Corporal Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson) and crew at his side only to be side-tracked by James Murray (Angus Macfadyen), a fellow explorer unfit for the journey.
Fawcett doesn’t give up despite Murray’s lawsuits, family trouble, his resignation from the Royal Geographical Society and World War I.
His search for the Lost City of Z provides the subtext for the movie. As much as this is an adventure tale, it’s also the story of a man desperate to not only prove himself personally and professionally. Personally he was, as the mucky mucks say, “unwise in his choice of ancestors.” Professionally he needs to prove to his British countrymen that the forgotten South American civilization were not “savages,” but people who have tamed the jungle and created empires.
His third and final try is a stripped down affair with son Jack (Tom Holland) in tow.
Traditionally made, “The Lost City of Z” feels old fashioned, as though you could almost imagine James Mason and Gregory Peck in the leads. It takes us back to a slower time, a moment in history before there were Starbucks on evefy corner and movies had to have gotcha moments woven throughout. It throws the modern adventure movie playbook out the window. There is no timetable for the action, no crash-and-burn scene every 10 minutes, just a story of survival and class warfare.
For much of the running time that’s OK. Director James Gray takes his time laying out Fawcett’s obsession, allowing us to get under the skin of a man with much to prove. It begins to feel overlong at the hour-and-a-half mark during a scene, wedged between the second and third explorations were a psychic goes on at length about the importance of Fawcett’s work and we still have WWI and the third expedition to go! It is the movie’s “dropout moment,” the scene that loses the audience and the film never recovers.
It’s a shame because “The Lost City of Z” is a handsome movie, ripe with subtext and solid performances. It’s also self indulgent, in need of one of Fawcett’s jungle machetes to chop it down to size.
