“Canada AM” film critic Richard Crouse on the news of Robin Williams’ death
“Canada AM” film critic Richard Crouse says news of Williams’ death is terribly sad, and tells the story of his first time seeing the actor.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Posts Tagged ‘Robin Williams’
CP24 FILM CRITIC RICHARD CROUSE ON CAREER OF ROBIN WILLIAMS
CP24 film critic Richard Crouse speaks with Rena Heer about Robin Williams’ career, the impact of his death, and how he will be remembered.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
CTV News Channel: Richard on the legacy of Robin Williams July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014
Oscar-winning actor and comedian Robin Williams has been found dead in California from an apparent suicide.
Watch the whole think HERE!
THE FACE OF LOVE: 4 STARS. “a grown up look at grief, love and aging.”
The old song says the look of love is in your eyes, but a new movie starring Anette Benning and Ed Harris suggests otherwise. In this movie the look of love is in the genes.
Love makes you do strange things. Gareth (Ed Harris) was the love of Nikki’s (Annette Bening) life. They led a charmed life, with a beautiful daughter (Jess Weixler) until in a terrible twist of fate, he was drowned while on vacation. The suddenness of his passing left Nikki with no closure until five years later when she catches a glimpse of Tom (Harris again), who is a real live dead ringer for her late husband.
She charms him and soon they are in love, or are they? Nikki never tells Tom about his resemblance to Gareth raising the question, Is she in love with Tom or a memory?
“The Face of Love” is a grown up look at grief, love and aging.
There will be as many reactions to Nikki ‘s actions as there are audience members. Is she a selfish conniver, a grief stricken widow or one brick short of a load? She sincerely says things like, “I’ve always loved you,” which in context, is open to a variety of interpretations.
The movie allows for interpretation, and regardless of your take, AB’s performance is so raw and vulnerable it’s difficult to completely condemn her behavior.
Harris is an open book–“I could take a bath in how you look at me,” he coos–and coming to grips with aging–which he describes as “walking backwards into the sunset. Thinking about the good times… and the bad times.”–as he loses his heart to her. It’s a nimble, warm, endearing performance and its great to see Bening and Harris spark off one another.
“The Face of Love” also features good work from Robin Williams as a lovesick neighbor but the star of the show are Nikki ‘s unresolved feelings that haunt every frame.
Disney’s Frozen: The story of actor Josh Gad, who never gave up on his Disney dreams
Josh Gad, the voice of Olaf the optimistic snowman in the new Disney animated film Frozen, thanks his mom for some very well timed advice. “My mother, God bless her,” he says, “allowed me to keep dreaming.”
The story starts in 1993.
“I was sitting in a dark theatre watching Aladdin,” he says. “Robin Williams is playing this insane genie character. I’m on the floor, as is the rest of the audience, and I looked over at my mom and said, ‘I want to do that one day,’ meaning, I want to be the comedic relief sidekick in one of these Disney films.”
Cut to a decade later.
“I was about three years out of college and I called my mom up and said, ‘I don’t think I want to do this anymore.’ She started crying. I said, ‘I’m going to go to law school.’ I thought my mother was going to celebrate that she wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore. But she was really disappointed. And I said, ‘Why are you disappointed?’
She said, ‘Because you’ve been dreaming about this for 15 years, but you are only allowing yourself to live out your dream for three years and I think that is unfair to yourself.’ It was very startling to hear her say that.”
“A week later I got my first big break on Broadway doing a show called The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I guess it was at that time I realized I was going to be OK.
“Book of Mormon was the point at which I realized I had reached a new level. That I had made it. I wasn’t a working actor anymore, I was an actor who was a part of something very special and that would allow and afford me more opportunities to do what I had dreamed of.”
Those opportunities include starring in TV shows like 1600 Penn and movies like Jobs, and, of course, making his dream from 1993 come true with Frozen.
“To get that phone call, saying, you are that guy,” he says, “I had to hold the phone down because I was sobbing with joy.”
Olaf, his comedic sidekick snowman, already has at least one fan — Gad’s young daughter.
“She was two-and-a-half when I took her to see her very first movie in a movie theatre, which was Monster’s University. The teaser for Frozen, which featured just my laugh [played before the movie].
“Off of that laugh she turned to me and said, ‘More dada. I want more dada.’ I had to turn away from her because I was embarrassed by the tears.”
HAPPY FEET: 3 STARS
Penguins are the new dogs. Not since the heyday of dog movies like Benji and Lassie has one species won over the hearts of so many. March of the Penguins was a left field hit last year and an R-rated parody of that movie, Farce of the Penguins, is set to be released soon. The little furry birds have recently appeared in Madagascar, the 3-2-1 Penguins series and even something called Penguins Behind Bars. Everybody loves penguins, but will they love penguins who sing and dance? Mad Max director George Miller is counting on it.
Miller’s latest film is Happy Feet, an animated film about a community of Emperor Penguins and one tap dancing misfit baby penguin who doesn’t quite fit in with the pack. With voice talent from an all-star cast (headlined by Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Elijah Wood and Robin Williams) the movie dispenses with the easy morality of most animated films digging a little deeper to explore the consequences of conformity and discuss important environmental concerns.
That may sound dull, but the movie is anything but. Miller’s stylish movie is jam-packed with music—Emperor penguins use heart songs to attract mates—and some first rate tap dancing that would make Sammy Davis Jr. proud. Younger kids may find one or two of the set pieces a little too intense. A chase scene with Mumbles the baby penguin on the run from a toothy seal lion is scary, but no more extreme than many of the real-life nature scenes in March of the Penguins.
INSOMNIA
Insomnia is director Christopher Nolan’s first film since last year’s Memento, and it is a stunner. In this remake of a Norwegian film made in 1998 by Erik Skjoldbjaerg, Nolan has cast three Oscar winners – Al Pacino and Hillary Swank play police officers chasing down a dangerous psychopath played by Robin Williams. Nolan set the film in Alaska, and makes good use of the location, particularly in the opening credit sequence as the camera follows a two-engine prop plane across the unforgiving jagged ice ridges. A foot chase on moving logs provides excitement, but the best thrills here are psychological. This is a film for adults. Insomnia is a serious thriller that relies not only on action, but on issues of guilt and morality to propel the story. Al Pacino hands in his best performance in years, although his accent seems to change from one scene to another. Robin Williams impresses, playing the homicidal Walter Finch with a chilling intensity that should forever put an end to the Mrs. Doubtfire typecasting pit he fell into in the 90s. Swank as the smart small-town cop delivers a multi-layered performance that is completely believable.
MAN OF THE YEAR: 2 STARS
Man of the Year is an odd movie. It follows the campaign and eventual election to the office of President of the United States by a Jon Stewart wannabe, played by Robin Williams. The strange thing is, though, the campaign appears to be happening in Canada. Specifically Toronto. Apparently Presidential Debates are now held at the University of Toronto.
That was just one of the things I learned while watching Man of the Year. I also found out that you can spot the Canadians in big budget American films made here because they’re the ones without any lines. I also now know that films starring Robin Williams are likely to include reaction shots of people laughing, kind of like a laugh track to cue the audience to start giggling at his insane improvised rants.
Man of the Year re-teams Williams with director Barry Levinson. Levinson has figured out how to blend the Williams the improv comic with Williams the actor by only casting him in roles that contain some kind of performance element. In Good Morning, Vietnam he was able to riff on the radio in between the earnest emoting that earned him an Academy Award nomination. Here Levinson allows him to run wild on the campaign trail, essentially letting him do his stand-up routine at debates and stumping stops. We get a taste of Williams the actor, but much of Man of the Year is akin to an HBO Special with a message.
But it’s not just that, and that is the film’s fatal flaw. Man of the Year contains some pretty good, although pretty obvious, comments on the American political system, but it isn’t content to be a political satire like Bulworth, or even Levinson’s Wag the Dog. Instead Levinson has created a mixed bag of a film that is part comedy, part action, part industrial espionage and part thriller without ever settling on any one. The film’s trailer promises a few laughs, and they are there, sprinkled throughout an uneven story involving a large company that invents a computerized voting booth. When Laura Linney’s character discovers the computer program’s glitch she is fired and made to look like an unstable crazy person by her former employers who are more concerned about their stock options than the accuracy of the election.
I say pick a story. Either one will do. Is this an industrial espionage story or a political satire? I’ve seen the movie and I still don’t know.
OLD DOGS: 2 ½ STARS
“Old Dogs,” the new comedy starring John Travolta and Robin Willliams as two middle aged men who discover the importance of family, clearly knows what its demographic is. With a boomer soundtrack heavy on hits from the 60s and 70s and a gaggle of incontinence jokes and prostate jokes it’s aimed directly at the crowd who can remember what they were doing when Kennedy was shot.
Williams and Travolta play Dan and Charlie, lifelong friends and business partners on the verge of their biggest deal ever. Dan is a business minded divorcee, who is “allergic to anything under four feet.” In other words no kids—doesn’t have them, doesn’t want them. Just as well, he doesn’t really need children when Charlie is around. He’s still a big kid with an ultramodern apartment full of toys and a habit of flirting with every woman he meets. Their carefully manicured lives are turned upside down when Vicki (Kelly Preston) re-enters Dan’s life. With her are her two kids, the result of a one night stand Dan had with Vicki in Miami seven years before. When Daddy Dan and Uncle Charlie take the kids for two weeks while Vicki serves a jail sentence for environmental activism (how au currant!) they learn that business doesn’t always come first.
“Old Dogs” is the broadest played comedy since “The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze.” It’s filled-to-bursting with funny faces, slapstick humor and not one, but two crotch shots. It’s mostly by-the-numbers—except for a strange “body puppet” sequence featuring the late Bernie Mac—that relies on Williams and Travolta to bring a little something extra to a script that may have been a laugh-free-zone in lesser hands. Williams wrings whatever laughs there are to be found in a spray tan catastrophe scene and Travolta finds the funny as an over medicated man at a bereavement pot luck. Also packing a few laughs are Luis Guzmán as the hungry childproofing expert and Matt Dillon as the hard line camp leader.
“Old Dogs” works best when it is going for laughs, unfortunately the slapstick is interspersed with mushy moments that seem to come out of nowhere. One moment Dan has lost all depth perception and is playing the wildest game of golf since Adam Sandler and Bob Barker threw it down on the links in “Happy Gilmour,” the next Williams is using his earnest “Patch Adams” eyes, staring at the camera, fretting that he’s not cutting it as a dad. The sudden shifts are a bit jarring, but for every sentimental scene there are four sciatica jokes, or a grand-pa gag.
“Old Dogs” is a sequel in spirit to Travolta’s “Wild Hogs.” Call it boomer porn if you like—it showcases older successful men, their beautiful younger wives and interesting lives—but at its heart it’s just an old fashioned family comedy.
