At age nine Richard Crouse saw The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool, Nova Scotia. Paul Newman starred, John Huston directed and Richard was hooked on the big screen. Since then he has seen thousands of movies, written about most of them in the pages of Metro, talked about them on television shows like Canada AM, where he has spent the last decade as film critic and on the radio on his own syndicated Bell Media radio show The Richard Crouse Show. He is also the author of six books on pop culture history including Who Wrote the Book of Love, the best-selling The 100 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, its sequel The Son of the 100 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, the bestselling Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils and the upcoming Elvis is King: Costello’s My Aim is True.
Read Richard’s list of books-turned-movies that are likely to be nominated for Academy Awards HERE!
Near the beginning of “The Imitation Game,” a handsome new bio pic from director Morten Tyldum, a policeman says, “I think Alan Turing is hiding something.”
He’s referring to the fact behind a break in at Turing’s home, but that remark turns out to be the biggest understatement not only of this movie, but perhaps of any movie this year.
Benedict Cumberbatch is Turing, a Cambridge mathematician who volunteers to help break the German’s most devastating weapon of war, the Enigma machine. “I like puzzles,” he says, “and the enigma is the most difficult puzzle in the world.” Called “the crooked hand of death itself,” it was a coding machine, thought to be unbreakable, that conveyed messages about every attack, every bombing run and every U-boat attack. The English tried for years to find the secret if the machine, but it wasn’t until Turing and his team—Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech and Keira Knightley—built a computer capable of decoding the Enigma’s missives that the war turned in favor of the good guys. It was a top-secret operation, classified for more than fifty years, but that wasn’t Turing’s only secret. Gay at a time when homosexuality was illegal, punishable by jail or chemical castration, he was forced to live a world of secrets, both personal and professional.
“The Imitation Game” is a story of defeat in triumph. Turing’s work marked a turning point in the war but the veil of secrecy denied him the acclaim that should accompanied his good work.
Cumberbatch seems to be making a career of playing misunderstood geniuses–WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Sherlock Holmes–and really embodies the quirks and quandaries of this man who seems ill equipped to deal with life outside of a math textbook. In a moment of anger Teresa (Knightley) calls him a “fragile narcissist” but the truth, as Cumberbatch plays it is more complex. He’s not fragile in the least. Throughout his life he makes difficult decisions, at boarding school, in relationships and later when he discovers the secret to Enigma but has to make the decision to allow a British convoy die rather than use information that would tip the Germans off that their machine had been compromised. Fragile he was not. A narcissist, perhaps, but at least he seems aware of it. “Mother says I can be off putting sometimes,” he says, “because I am the best mathematician in the world.”
Either way, as another character says, “I’ll give you a quid if you can find a more insufferable sod.”
That may be so, but in Cumberbatch’s hands he’s a fascinating character.
Supporting cast and period production values are top notch, but it’s Cumberbatch who excels, peeling back the layers of Turing’s enigmatic life.
Appearing in one of the movies! I was in Red Alert, a short that played before the movie Wet Bum. IT’s not enough that I cover 100 movies during the fest, now I have to be in them too! I even got a review. “@richardcrouse is great in Red Alert…” Mike Bullard wrote on twitter. “I’d like to tell you I didn’t know he was a redhead but I knew… I just knew ok.”
In person Benedict Cumberbatch’s voice sounds like hot melting wax. I liked Sherlock well enough and have seen him in several movies, but for me, and I know I’m the last to get it, his performance in The Imitation Game is a game changer. He plays real-life character Alan Turing, a Cambridge mathematician who volunteers to help break Germany’s most devastating WWII weapon of war, the Enigma machine. It was a top-secret operation, classified for more than 50 years, but that wasn’t Turing’s only secret. Gay at a time when homosexuality was illegal, punishable by jail or chemical castration, he was forced to live a world of secrets, both personal and professional.
Robert Pattinson telling me about how Hollywood was before camera phones: “When I first started going to LA everyone was underage and if you were a famous actor the rules did not apply. You could be a sixteen-year-old and go into a club but now that there are camera phones everywhere that doesn’t exist anymore. That period was so weird. You’d see a fourteen-year-old actor wasted, doing lines of blow on the table. It was crazy. Now they just do it at their parent’s house.”
Julie Taymore telling me that A Midsummer Night’s Dream “It was the first play I ever saw. I saw it here in Canada at the Stratford Festival…”
Michael Moore’s answer to my question about his reaction to all the celebrity he gained after appearing at TIFF 25 years ago with Roger and Me: Asked what was going through his head while all this was swirling around him, Moore says: “Why didn’t I go to Jenny Craig three months ago?”
“I don’t know where they are,” Kingsley says about his characters, “if they’re inside me waiting to come out or whether they are outside of me. Are they hunting me or am I hunting them? I don’t know.”
Repairing Dustin Hoffman’s watch. During a roundtable interview the alarm on his watch went off several times. He gave it to me and I looked up the instructions on how to fix it on Google. “How did it you look it up on line? They have instructions to fix Timexes on line? I don’t automatically go to those things,” he said. During the interview he said: “I was told to take acting. Nobody flunks acting.” Later he said that it wasn’t such a bad choice because, for instance, “No one ever says, ‘I want to be a critic when I grow up.’”
Lowlight… waiting for BIll Murray for seven hours. (Although I love this from @ZeitchikLAT: Bill Murray, offering implicit proof on the merits of Bill Murray Day: “If this is really my day, why do I have to do so much work?”)
Sitting next to next to Boo Radley, Bill Kilgore and Tom Hagan. (Robert Duvall!)
Most quotable actors of the festival? Robert Duvall who said, about acting, “There’s no right or wrong just truthful or untruthful.” He calls Billy Bob Thornton “The hillbilly Orson Welles…” and said “Brando used to watch Candid Camera.” Jane Fonda was a close second when she said acting is great for the heart but terrible for the nerves… “Butts have become more in fashion… (since Barbarella) and “Television is forgiving to older women and making it possible for us to have longer careers.”
“I have distilled socialism in this box and am taking it back to America.” – Robert Downey Jr in my roundtable interview.
#TIFF14 socks day 3. Chris O’Dowd called them “powerful.” and Rosamund Pike said, “I’m enjoying your socks. They make me happy.”
Watching “Whiplash” knock the socks off an audience at an IMAX P&! screening. It is part musical—the big band jazz numbers are exhilarating—and part psychological study of the tense dynamics between mentor and protégée in the pursuit of excellence. The pair is a match made in hell. Teacher Fletcher, played by J.K. Simmons is a vain, driven man given to throwing chairs at his students if they dare hit a wring note. He’s an exacting hardliner who teaches by humiliation and fear. This movie doesn’t miss a beat.
Love this quote: “Being in the military,” said Adam Driver of This Is Where I Leave You, “believe it or not, is very different than being in an acting school.”
At age nine Richard Crouse saw The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool, Nova Scotia. Paul Newman starred, John Huston directed and Richard was hooked on the big screen. Since then he has seen thousands of movies, written about most of them in the pages of Metro, talked about them on television shows like Canada AM, where he has spent the last decade as film critic and on the radio on his own syndicated Bell Media radio show The Richard Crouse Show. He is also the author of six books on pop culture history including Who Wrote the Book of Love, the best-selling The 100 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, its sequel The Son of the 100 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, the bestselling Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils and the upcoming Elvis is King: Costello’s My Aim is True.
