Richard joins CP24 anchor Nathan Downer to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” an awkward wedding night in “On Chesil Beach” starring Saoirse Ronan, “Birthmarked” with Toni Collette and Mathew Goode and a documentary on one of fashion’s leading figures, “The Gospel According to Andre.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s big releases, “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” an awkward wedding night in “On Chesil Beach” starring Saoirse Ronan and a documentary on one of fashion’s leading figures, “The Gospel According to Andre.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
From BNN.com: “Solo: A Star Wars Story” has opened in theatres around the world and Richard Crouse, film critic and host of “Pop Life,” is giving it 3 out of 5 stars. And while a long list of Star Wars standalones and spinoffs are reported to be in the works, Crouse is not really seeing signs of Star Wars fatigue. However, he does say that “the hairs on the back” of his hands don’t stand up like they used to when he hears the Star Wars music.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Did you ever wonder what Rick Blaine was up to before he opened a fancy nightclub and gambling den in Casablanca? What Katniss Everdeen was like as a child? How Tyler Durden came to make the rules for his fight club?
Some classic movie characters come with backstories, others simply exist for the moments in time we spend staring at the screen. Others earn origin stories while others are best left as one offs.
Still others, like Han Solo, also exist in our imaginations and are the subject of much speculation. For forty years fans have wondered how Solo zipped through through hyperspace to do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, how he got his last name and why the Space Cowboy and Chewbacca are as tight as two Porgs in a space pod. The “Star Wars” smuggler ranks up there with the most popular characters of all time and a new film, “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” fills in the blanks on the legends never before detailed on film.
The story begins with Han’s (Alden Ehrenreich) daring escape attempt from his hellish life on Corellia and the Imperial Guards who reign over him. With dreams of becoming a pilot dancing in his head the street urchin makes it out, vowing to return to rescue his girlfriend Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). In quick order he enlists in the Imperial Army, gets kicked out and falls in with a gang of thieves led by the charismatic Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson). “Let me give you some advice,” Beckett says, “assume everyone will betray you and you will never be disappointed.”
Later, betrayed and thrown into a squalid death pit, he meets Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), the 190-year-old Wookie who will soon become the Sundance Kid to his Butch Cassidy. A heist gone wrong brings the newly minted band of misfits into the orbit of intergalactic boogeyman Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). He offers them a chance to settle their score with them but to do so they’ll need a new ship. Enter space scoundrel Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) and his magnificent flying machine, the Millennium Falcon.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” is an old fashioned mix of action, adventure and romance with loads of “Star Wars” mythology woven into the story. There’s no force, no Jedi just a straightforward story populated with likeable (and purposefully not so likeable) characters. Director Ron Howard, who took over after Phil Lord and Chris Miller were let go, keeps the action fluid, injects plenty of humour—“You will never have a deeper sleep than curled up in a Wookie lap,” says four-armed pilot Rio (Jon Favreau) wistfully.—shaping the story, after a slow start, into a bit of a romp. He’s hampered by a story with very low stakes. We know (THIS IS NOT A SPOILER UNLESS YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN OR EVEN HEARD OF THE STAR WARS MOVIES) that Han, Chewie and Lando go on to greater adventures so there doesn’t seem to be much at risk. It’s fun to get a glimpse of the young versions of characters we all know but “Solo: A Star Wars Story” feels slight, less consequential than the other films in the series.
Ehrenreich tackles the impossible job of filling in the gaps left by Harrison Ford. He’s all swagger. A fearless, fast-on-his-feet, walking-talking attitude, he’s solid but doesn’t bring the charisma that so effortlessly flowed from Ford.
The supporting cast, however, delivers in spades. Glover oozes charm, playing Calrissian as a swaggering pirate with a fashion sense and a “what’s in it for me” bearing that makes him eminently watchable.
Chewie is given a backstory and more to do than simply act as a sidekick. Given the chance to help his family, who have been torn apart by the empire, the 7′ 6” fuzzball goes his own way, disobeying Solo. He has his own mind and asserts himself in a way he hasn’t before. Suotamo, with his deft physical work, also provides some of the film’s biggest laughs.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” has some nice moments but relies on adrenalin when it should trust its characters.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show host Andrew Carter to talk about the origins of one of the most famous characters in movie history in “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” an awkward wedding night in “On Chesil Beach” starring Saoirse Ronan and a documentary on one of fashion’s leading figures, “The Gospel According to Andre.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies, Tom Hanks as symbologist Robert Langdon in “Inferno,” two of the best movies of the years, “Moonlight” and “The Handmaiden” and Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut, “American Pastoral.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel morning show to have a look at the weekend’s new movies, Tom Hanks as symbologist Robert Langdon in “Inferno,” two of the best movies of the years, “Moonlight” and “The Handmaiden” and Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut, “American Pastoral.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
This weekend professor of religious iconology and symbology Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) returns to theatres in Inferno, the third movie in the Da Vinci Code franchise.
In 2006 the fictional Harvard prof made his big screen debut, uncovering the complicated personal life of Jesus Christ in The Da Vinci Code. Three years later he used his knowledge of symbology to unravel the mystery of a secret brotherhood called the Illuminati and thwart a terrorist act against the Vatican.
In between those two movies I received dozens of outraged emails, long tracts regarding Dan Brown’s books, the up-coming movie, The Illuminati and the veracity of the stories.
In response to the anxious folks who contacted me, concerned the film, which had not been released yet, would be a dangerous piece of anti-Catholic propaganda, I wrote a forward to my Angels and Demons review, pointing letter writers toward the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. They described Angels and Demons as “harmless entertainment which hardly affects the genius and mystery of Christianity.” Their review noted it is filled with historical inaccuracies but went on to suggest that one could make a game of pointing out all of the film’s historical mistakes.
In other words, don’t take it seriously and you’ll have a good time. Despite the Vatican newspaper’s warm embrace, the film still ignited a firestorm of criticism from people upset about the story’s alleged anti-Catholic sentiments, “malicious myths” and churches being associated with scenes of murder.
Inferno sidesteps religious controversy with a tale of a deadly virus that threatens all of humanity, but cinema and religion have often made for uncomfortable pairings.
In 1999 the Catholic League denounced Dogma’s tale of two fallen angels (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) trying to get back into heaven as “blasphemy.” More recently uproar erupted over Darren Aronofsky’s unorthodox take on the story of Noah. Jerry Johnson, president of the National Religious Broadcasters, loudly objected to the film’s “insertion of the extremist environmental agenda.”
Perhaps the most controversial religious film ever was The Devils, based on Aldous Huxley’s nonfiction book The Devils of Loudun. Years before Ken Russell made the movie, a filmmaker approached Huxley wanting to turn the story of a radical 17th century French Catholic priest accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake, into a film. Huxley said, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t make a movie out of this.’ He thought there was no way the story could be presented in an entertaining way without short-circuiting people’s minds. Turns out maybe he was right.
Forty-five years after its release Russell’s film is little seen but much talked about. Banned, censored and still unavailable in its complete form on Blu-Ray, the movie’s graphic church orgy offended many—and was cut to pieces and removed by censors—but it’s more than shock and titillation. It’s a film that makes a serious statement about the struggle between church and state but does so in an entertaining and provocative way.
Lots of movies contain violence or sex or religion, but Russell mixed all three together in one toxic cocktail. If released today The Devils may not inspire riots in the streets, as it did in 1971, but if presented in its complete form the following indignation would make the Angels and Demons protests seem tame.
A better title for “Inferno,” the latest big screen exploits of symbology professor Robert Langdon, might have been “The Da Vinci Code: This Time it’s Personal.” Not only must Langdon, once again in the form of Tom Hanks, confront an old love but he also must dig deep into his shattered memory to piece together the clues of his greatest mystery ever.
Or something like that.
The convoluted story begins with bioengineer and billionaire Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster) spewing his extreme theories on the planet’s problems. “Every ill on earth can be traced back to overpopulation,” he says. In the space of just twenty four hours Zobrist drops out of the picture, and Langdon is found disoriented and put under the care of Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones). “What am I doing in Florence?” he asks. Suffering from retrograde amnesia and terrifying visions of a hellish nature, people with heads twisted back to front, seas of fire, pools of blood and serpents, he struggles to remember the events of the last forty-eight hours.
With the help of Brooks he goes on the run from a determined assassin (Ana Ularu) and the World Health Organization until he can gather the clues that will lead him to the Inferno Virus, a plague planted by Zobrist to cull the world’s population by half. “Humanity is the disease,” he cackles, “Inferno is the cure.”
Add in close calls, narrow escapes and clues hidden in Italian antiquities and you have “Inferno,” the thriller with no clue how to be thrilling. Instead it’s two hours of exposition, a lesson in Botticelli and Dante. Whatever thrills there were to be mined from David Koepp’s script are blunted by director Ron Howard’s habit of showing and telling clues and info over and over, not trusting the viewer to be able to follow along. With convoluted clues and lots of Italian names and places to keep track of “Inferno” repeats information ad nauseam.
This is the third time Hanks has played Langdon but in the fullness of time I don’t think we’ll look back on the symbologist as the actor’s most memorable character. He carries the movies, which have made hundreds of millions of dollars, but he’s less a character then he is an exposition machine, an explainer of obscure history, a purveyor of aha moments. Hanks is a charmer, but he’s done in trying to wade through the movie’s scripting mire.
Sharing the screen is Jones, soon to be seen in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” As Dr. Brooks she is Langdon’s intellectual match and one of the dual engines that keeps the story plodding along, but spends most of the film nodding in agreement to Langdon’s sudden, remarkable realisations.
As the villain Foster’s few appearances—he’s peppered throughout usually appearing in video clips, is further proof that Hollywood doesn’t know what to do with this talented actor.
More fun is Irrfan Khan as the calm, cool and collected head of a mysterious group that manages risks for high profile clients. He’s deadly, duplicitous and James Bond villain suave.
The obvious joke here is that “Inferno” is clueless. But it’s not, it’s overstuffed with clues, just not thrills.
