Richard joins CP24 anchor Kelly Linehan to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including “How to Train Your Dragon: the Hidden World” and the charming “Fighting With My Family” and German Oscar contender “Never Look Away.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Jennifer Burke to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including “How to Train Your Dragon: the Hidden World” and the charming “Fighting With My Family” and German Oscar contender “Never Look Away.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the fourth season of “Pop Life” and three new movies coming to theatres, “How to Train Your Dragon: the Hidden World,” the charming “Fighting With My Family” and the German Oscar nominee “Never Look Away” with CFRA Morning Rush guest host Matt Harris.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
A weekly feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at the further adventures of Hiccup and Toothless in “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World,” the real life story of “Fighting With My Family” and the German Oscar nominee “Never Look Away.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar nominated “Never Look Away” (German title: “Werk ohne Autor”), uses biographical details from the life of painter Gerhard Richter to explore memory and meaning in Post War Germany.
We first meet Kurt Barnert (played as a child by Cai Cohrs) in Dresden as he and his Aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl) tour a 1937 exhibit of modern—or as the Nazi call it, “degenerate”—art featuring works by Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, and Oskar Kokoschka. The raw emotionalism of the paintings has a profound effect on the youngster, a feeling encouraged by his free-wheeling aunt who tells him, “everything that’s true is beautiful.”
The war brings with it trauma for Barnert (now played by Tom Schilling). From a father forced to join with the Nazis to suffering unimaginable losses the young man grows up to attend art school and pursue his dream. Funnelling his pain and experience into his work he becomes a socialist realist painter in East Germany before defected to the West with his wife Ellie (Paula Beer) in the early 1960s.
The story of Barnert’s life is told against the backdrop of some of the twentieth century’s most turbulent times. At three hours “Never Look Away” qualifies as an epic but it still feels intimate. Shocking scenes of gas chambers and the arcane eugenic practices that see Aunt Elisabeth unceremoniously taken to a facility run by the vain and villainous Dr. Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch) provide the historical perspective necessary to tell the story but the focus is personal. Donnersmarck harnesses all the story points—some of which are, admittedly, melodramatic—to focus on the devastating multi-generational impact of World War II and the actions of the Third Reich.
Near the end of the film Barnert says, “I don’t make statements, I make pictures.” With “Never Look Away” Donnersmarck has done both with a film that envisions a life and comments on finding meaning in a troubled past.
Richard joins CP24 anchor Nathan Downer to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including Melissa McCarthy’s literary drama “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” the “Hunt for Red October” copy cat “Hunter Killer,” the highfalutin hostage story “Bel Canto,” the comedic cautionary tale “Room for Rent,” the family drama “What They Had” and the operatic documentary “Maria by Callas.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
A weekly feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at Melissa McCarthy’s literary drama “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” the family drama “What They Had” and the highfalutin hostage story “Bel Canto.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“Bel Canto,” based on Ann Patchett’s best-selling novel about the “Lima Crisis at the Japanese embassy in the Peruvian capital in 1996, is a hostage drama that is also about the power of music to bridge all gaps. It’s also a thriller and a love story. It’s a lot of things that never quite gel into one whole.
The story begins with a South American concert in honour of Japanese industrialist (Ken Watanabe) by opera singer Roxanne Coss (Julianne Moore). As arias and coloratura passages fill the air a group of guerrilla rebels burst in, take everyone hostage and demand their comrades be let out of prison in return for the release of the high falutin’ captives.
Negotiations drag on for over a month, confining the kidnappers and the kidnapped inside a luxury mansion. Soon bonds are forged, romances bloom—a translator (Ryo Kase) begins a clandestine affair with a terrorist (María Mercedes Coroy)—as differences are set aside and commonalities—a love of music, soccer and humanity—are unearthed.
The Stockholm Syndrome of “Bel Canto” is about as convincing as Julianne Moore lip syncing to opera singer Renée Fleming’s beautiful vocals. Splitting the focus of the story between the ensemble gives everyone something to do but never convincingly comes together as one story. I’m sure director Paul Weitz (half of the brother team, with Chris Weitz, who made “American Pie” and “About a Boy”) hoped the story would have political and socioeconomic resonances but it plays more like a soap opera, flitting from scene to scene with an ever-increasing sense of melodrama.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk about Melissa McCarthy’s literary drama “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” the “Hunt for Red October” wannabe “Hunter Killer,” the highfalutin hostage story “Bel Canto,” the comedic cautionary tale “Room for Rent” and the Alzheimer’s dramedy “What They Had.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
