Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to do a high five! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about “The Monkey’s” damn dirty ape, the family story “The Unbreakable Boy” and the Canadian drama “Morningside.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join the CTV NewsChannel to talk about “The Monkey’s” damn dirty ape, the family story “The Unbreakable Boy” and the Canadian drama “Morningside.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for “Booze & Reviews!” This week I go ape for “The Monkey” and suggest some drinks that’ll make you go bananas!
Listen as we monkey around on Booze & Reviews HERE!
Find out why “Spider-Man” star Tom Holland wasn’t able to buy his own brand of non-alcoholic beer HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “The Monkey,” a new horror comedy based on Stephen King’s 1980 short story of the same name, a vintage toy monkey brings murder and mayhem into the lives of twin brothers Hal and Bill, both played by Theo James.
CAST: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, and Sarah Levy. Directed by Osgood Perkins.
REVIEW: An inanimate object horror film about the randomness of life and death, “The Monkey” feels like an old-fashioned Stephen King movie. It’s a little rough-and-tumble, meanspirited and it delivers a series of practical splatter gags in great big gory blasts.
There’s even a callback to one of King’s favorite psychopaths.
It’s the story of an organ grinder monkey toy—Wait! Don’t call it a toy! It’s evil incarnate! “It’s basically the devil,” says Hal.—who, with grinning rictus of terror, bangs on a drum like he’s Charlie Watts. As he taps away people die in increasingly terrible ways. From fishhook trauma and aneurisms to immolation and canon fire, the monkey is indiscriminate in choosing his victims or how they will perish. Think “Final Destination,” minus the monkey, and you’ll get the idea.
Try as they might, the twins can’t stop the monkey from dancing to his own drum. “We know it couldn’t be destroyed,” says Hal, “but we hoped it could be controlled.”
As the body count rises, they soon realize that won’t be possible.
Director Osgood Perkins channels his inner Sam “Evil Dead” Raimi, combining old school splatter with very dark humor. It makes for a giddy goodtime, especially as the kills get more and more slapsticky and outlandish.
“The Monkey” does feel stretched from its short story origins to feature film, but Perkins keeps the energy up and the storytelling efficient enough to warrant its 97-minute runtime.
On the Saturday October 14, 2023 edition of The Richard Crouse Show get to know Academy Award-winning filmmaker Errol Morris. His film “The Thin Blue Line” placed fifth on a Sight & Sound poll of the greatest documentaries ever made, and he has, in his films, documented everything from the career of Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War and physicist Stephen Hawking to a topiary gardener, a robot scientist and a naked mole rat specialist.
“The Pigeon Tunnel,” his latest film, now streaming on Apple TV+, is a look at the extraordinary life of David Cornwell a.k.a. prolific author John le Carré. Through a retelling of his life, Cornwell examines the very essence of truth, and how memory and manipulation play a part in how we shape our world and our perceptions.
“The Pigeon Tunnel” is as compelling as any le Carré novel. Cornwell/ le Carré knows how to tell a tale, and like any good spy, he knows what details to include, and which to hide away. Morris doesn’t attempt to chip away at the façade and get at the underlying truth, because he knows, in the hands of master storyteller, a good story is a good story, whether it is true or not.
We’ll also meet Robert McCallum, director of the Amazon Prime documentary “Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe,” an award-winning look at the life and legacy of legendary children’s entertainer Ernie Coombs.
Finally, we’ll chat with Tatiana Maslany. You know her as the Emmy winning star of thew science-fiction thriller “Orphan Black,” and as part of the Marvel Universe as the star of “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.” Today she joins me to talk about playing Jennifer, a Monarch butterfly who suffers from acrophobia, a fear of heights, in the new animated film “Butterfly Tale.” We talk Butterflies, Broadway and much more.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Here’s some info on The Richard Crouse Show!
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
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The last time Nicole Kidman wore this much prosthetic make up she won a Best Actress Oscar. “Destroyer” sees her almost unrecognizable except for her unmistakable movie-star jaw line in silhouette.
Kidman plays Erin Bell, a police detective ground down by years on the job, booze and the haunting memory of a case going wrong. When we first meet her she’s on the scene of a crime. When she spots a familiar tattoo on the victim she realizes a former adversary is back in town. It’s Silas (Toby Kebbell), a mini-Manson who controls his people through intimidation and drugs. “He’s either cleaning up,” she says, “or restarting again.“
To get to the bottom of the latest murder she begins an investigation that forces her to confront her behaviour on a long ago undercover case. The case puts her at odds with her estranged daughter (Jade Pettyjohn) and draws her down a path populated by increasingly sleazy characters including a crooked lawyer (Bradley Whitford) who tells her she is sad and stupid for revisiting the past and Petra (Tatiana Maslany), a drug addict and direct link to Silas. It’s dangerous territory, but she is undaunted. “I don’t care what happens to me,” she says. Eventually the past, told through flashbacks, catches up with the present filling in the details of how Erin ended up where she is today.
At the heart of “Destroyer” is a complex moral question, Can you ever really pay for the sins of your past? It mostly goes unanswered, although her actions hint at some sort of uneasy resolution. In the end it is obvious that while she may be trying to do the right thing, it seems likely she’ll end up in a bad way.
Kidman is in full-blown anti-heroine mode. You can practically smell the stale breath; feel her pounding hangover headaches. She’s in rough shape, the result of a lifetime of bad decisions. Kidman does a Herculean job of brushing aside any likable traits in Erin and adds a few interesting flourishes as she paints the portrait of this troubled woman but overall the result is mostly a paint by numbers picture you’ve seen before in other hard boiled crime dramas.
“Destroyer” is a gritty drama that, despite Kidman’s makeup, doesn’t change the complexion of similar stories in other movies.
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
People call Jeff Bauman a hero but it’s not a label he enjoys.
“I don’t like being called a hero,” he says. “In my eyes, there are heroes I look up to, the people who saved my life, the caretakers, my surgeon and my wife, the love of my life. She’s my hero. I lost something but my heroes picked me up.”
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Bauman in Stronger, the story of the man whose life changed the morning of April 15, 2013. Bauman, while waiting at the Boston Marathon finish line for his ex-girlfriend to finish the race, was standing next to one of the Boston Bombers. Gravely injured after the blast he was rescued by a stranger in a cowboy hat and rushed to the hospital where both his legs were amputated above the knees. The tragedy thrust Bauman into the spotlight, making him a reluctant beacon for the Boston Strong movement.
“Through a number of circumstances the movie was hard to get made,” says Gyllenhaal who also produced the film. “Number one, movies like this, stories like this, aren’t being told as much. There is a real balance in this movie of humour and a certain type of depth that I think tonally can confuse people who want something that seems a little simpler.
“I think also, in a lot of ways, when they heard about this story people thought it was too soon or who wants to make a movie out of that event. In truth, the movie is not about the event at all. That’s why I loved it.”
Stronger is not the story of a bomb or the radical politics that saw it planted at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It’s the story of the aftermath and Bauman’s inspirational recovery.
“The thing that is most important to me is that people see this movie,” says Gyllenhaal. “We have always been that movie that has a little of that underdog spirit. It has been a long and pretty incredible journey. I just want people to see it because I think today there are so many hard things happening in the world and Jeff’s story sort of proves to people that they can keep going, that they can take another step. That they can survive that minute or that second or that hour that they don’t think they’ll be able to get through. He is a beacon for that and I want people to see that.”
Bauman says he’s proud of the movie but says watching it for the first time was “sensory overload” as it forced him to relive the worst moment of his life.
“I cried a lot,” he says. “I kind of just went, ‘I want to go home afterward and go to sleep,’ and I did. I went home and went to sleep. The next day things hit me a little bit more. It’s emotional for me.”
Bauman may not want to be called a hero, but Gyllenhaal, who became close with the Boston native during he making of the film, says, “A lot of people have asked me over my career: ‘When are you going to play in a superhero movie?’ I feel like I finally kind-of have. To me, that’s how I feel about him. He’s a total inspiration to me.”
“Stronger” is not the story of a bomb or the radical politics that saw it planted at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It’s the story of the aftermath.
When we first meet Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal) he’s a goofy, out-going 28-year-old guy working as a chicken roaster at Costco. The only thing he loves more than the Red Socks is his ex girlfriend Erin Hurley (Tatiana Maslany), an uptown girl who is running in the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. The night before the run he bumps into her. “I suffered an industrial chicken related accident today,” he says, flirting, “but I’ll be there at the finish line for you.”
History reports what happened next. Bauman, standing next to one of the Boston Bombers, was gravely injured. Rescued by a stranger in a cowboy hat (Carlos Sanz as Carlos Arredondo) he is rushed to the hospital where both his legs are amputated above the knees.
The tragedy shines a spotlight on Jeff who becomes a reluctant beacon for the Boston Strong movement. Released from hospital a hero, as he struggles to learn how to navigate his new body, Erin re-enters his life, drawn by love and guilt for being the reasons he attended the race. As that relationship blossoms and the city embraces him, Jeff grows uneasy, plagued by PTSD. “I don’t want to relive the worst day of my life,” he says.
As he grapples with fame, a mother (Miranda Richardson) who lives vicariously through his newfound celebrity, his relationship with Erin becomes strained. It isn’t until he reconnects with Carlos, the man who saved his life, that Jeff begins to piece together the broken shards of his life.
Because we know the story of the Boston bombing so well, tension builds soon as the marathon scene begins. A man with a backpack, ball cap and shades bumps into Jeff, signalling what is to come but this isn’t an action movie. It is strongest when it gets to be emotional care of the film, Jeff’s inability to deal with his new reality.
Director David Gordon Green is aided by a nuanced performance from Gyllenhaal that mutes his usual movie star physique in favour of a more vulnerable physicality—the scenes of his struggle to adapt to his wheelchair are painful—in favour of a rich inner life. His performance provides a glimpse of Jeff’s complicated feelings as he comes to grips with his new reality. He’s less a movie star and more a down-home heroic figure in-the-making. “I’m reluctant hero,” he says. “People see that I don’t let anything hold me down and maybe they won’t let anything hold them down either.”
As Erin, Maslany is the very embodiment of empathy. She delivers a quiet performance that subtly conveys an olio of emotions from love and guilt to compassion and anger. It’s terrific work that brings some much-needed subtlety to a film that occasionally goes a bit over-the-top.
Jeff’s plain-spoken, high strung family, lead by Jeff Sr (Clancy Brown) and Patty “Did you have sex with my son?” Bauman, is played a bit too broadly. A hint of rough-and-tumble Boston caricature seeps in whenever the Bauman clan gathers in a movie that is at its best when it is restrained.
“Stronger” is sometimes a bit too on the money—“You’re a symbol to a lot of people,” gushes dad, “you’re Boston Strong.”—but works well when it lets go of the triumph of the human spirit angle and allows the characters to behave like people, not heroes.
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
The story of two star-crossed lovers on the run from bad memories is at the heart of Two Lovers and a Bear, a new Arctic-set film from Rebelle director Kim Nguyen.
Counselling the couple is a talking polar bear, a philosophical addition to a movie that is part romance, part thriller and all icy cold isolation.
Montreal native Nguyen says the script for the film evolved over time, but many of the elements, including the talking bear came to him on a stopover at the Amsterdam airport.
“I was reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami,” he says. “There are weird gods in the book, kind of like imperfect Greek gods with flaws. It dawned on me that I should have something like an imperfect, flawed deity in the film.”
At the same time he noticed the airport’s giant brass teddy bears and voilà, the idea of an advice-giving polar bear was born.
The bear, played by a real polar bear named Agee and voiced by acting legend Gordon Pinsent, is the most fanciful part of a film that sees Lucy and Roman, played by recent Emmy winner Tatiana Maslany and Dane DeHaan, embark on a physical and metaphysical journey to confront their troubled, violent pasts.
“I’ve seen a lot of people like that,” Nguyen says of the people he met in Nunavut, “(people) who just can’t connect with an organized, dense, compact society. They have to go up North and that’s why you meet very interesting, unique characters up there. Often it is the people who don’t cope with societal norms.”
Nguyen’s unpredictable story intensifies with every twist, finding depth as the volatile Lucy and Roman explore the vast white expanse of their home and their innermost fears.
The lead actors have some heavy lifting to do to navigate the film’s many shifts from comedy, to psychological drama and isolationist horror.
To survive the inhospitable cold of their home both must be strong willed characters but both also wear their fragility on their parka sleeves. As such, Maslany and DeHaan are perfectly cast.
“We met a lot of people,” says Nguyen. “At the beginning it wasn’t defined exactly who Lucy was going to be; where she would come from. We wanted to keep it open with the casting. Tatiana came a little later on. We didn’t even think about her. Coming off of Orphan Black the casting director said, ‘Why don’t we try her? She’s versatile. She has range.’ She was gracious enough to do a screen test. She blew us away. She was totally way up there in the truthfulness and the authenticity. She is really someone who is able to connect. Kind of like Dane.
“I discovered Dane when I saw Place Beyond the Pines. When I saw that, I was certain that Dane wasn’t a trained actor. He was so authentic I assumed he was this guy who had this one role in him. Then I learned he was a trained actor and was really impressed by his performance.”
The six-week Nunavut shoot was gruelling for all, requiring physical stamina and a trait Nguyen calls “one of the biggest, most important qualities”— fearlessness.
“Dane and Tatiana have that,” says the director. “They dive in and they are not analyzing their performance as they’re playing it.”
