RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY MAY 29, 2015.
Richard’s CP24 reviews for “San Andreas,” “Aloha” and “I’ll See You in My Dreams.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Posts Tagged ‘The Poseidon Adventure’
RICHARD’S “CANADA AM” REVIEWS FOR MAY 29 WITH BEVERLY THOMSON.
Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “San Andreas,” “Aloha” and “I’ll See You in My Dreams.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Metro Canada: San Andreas – Gugino talks triumph amid disaster
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
Carla Gugino was living in New York in September 2001. Every day she would look at the Twin Towers from her window, and then, one morning they were gone. The rush of emotions she felt on 9/11 stayed with her as she filmed her new movie, the earthquake disaster flick San Andreas.
“I thought about it a lot in the way Dwayne Johnson’s character and my character reconnect in this movie,” she says.
In the film she plays Johnson’s estranged wife who teams with him to rescue their daughter from a devastating earthquake that rips California in half.
“What I found so smart and well done is that they connect not in a cliché way or in a sentimental way; they reconnect because they may not be alive the next day. In those moments, which was very much the case with 9/11 and what happened that morning, you realize you want to go help people. You want to be with the people you love and you want to not sweat the small stuff. It contextualizes life in such a radical way.”
Warner Bros chose not to change the release date of San Andreas in light of the recent deadly earthquakes in Nepal. Instead they’ve used the film’s trailers and ads to raise awareness about relief efforts and have vowed to match donations made by their employees. “There were always going to be public service announcements after the trailer and the film,” Gugino adds, “but then they were specifically geared toward Nepal.”
“This is a movie that does not take Mother Nature or her tics lightly,” says Gugino, “and I think it’s about the triumph of the human spirit, which is what always amazes me. At 9/11 and seeing this terrible situation in Nepal the thing you are reminded of is the resilience of the human spirit.”
The actress, best known for her roles in Spy Kids and Sin City, lives in New York but spent twenty years living in Los Angeles on top of the shaky San Andreas fault line.
“I’ve been in a couple of big ones in LA and they are intense,” she says. “The first one I ran outside which is exactly what you are not supposed to do. That is a good thing about San Andreas, you actually learn some stuff too—the whole under a doorway, or under a desk ting. Or under Dwayne Johnson. That is one of the advantages of his size.”
SAN ANDREAS: 1 STAR (AND THAT’S ONLY BECAUSE I’M AFRAID TO GIVE THE ROCK 0 STARS)
Where’s Irwin Allen when you need him? He was the Master of Disaster, a director and producer who gave us misery masterpieces like “The Poseidon Adventure” and “The Towering Inferno,” films that gave cinematic calamity a good name. Allen’s mastery of the form is sorely missing from a new earthquake movie that rumbles but fails to shake up the audience.
In “San Andreas” Dwayne Johnson, the actor formerly known as The Rock, goes head to head with his biggest foe ever—the tectonic fault line that runs through most of California.
He plays Ray, a Los Angeles Fire Department rescue-helicopter pilot who tries to save his wife (Carla Gugino) and daughter (Alexandra Daddario) in the wake of a devastating earthquake in San Francisco. How big is the quake? “Even though it is happening in California,” says a seismologist (Paul Giamatti), “you will feel it on the East Coast.”
Cue the wild action, crumbling buildings and Johnson’s trademarked strained neck muscles.
Come to see The Rock! Stay for the collapsing digital buildings! “San Andreas” is an orgy of CGI with pixel dust billowing out of hundreds of buildings made of bits and bytes. There is much computer artistry on display, but sadly little artistry of any other kind.
Johnson is tailor made for big action movies, but here he is done in by a script that uses lines like, “I know this sounds crazy but…” as a crutch to push the action forward. Unfortunately the big set pieces actually get duller as they get bigger. Not enough variation—Look everyone! There’s yet ANOTHER building falling apart!—and lackluster 3D make “San Andreas” on of the most visually uninteresting action flicks to come along in some time.
The only thing less interesting than the look is the dialogue, which consists mostly of the actors mouthing, “Are you hurt?” or “Oh, this is not good,” or my favourite, “It’s an earthquake!” The only cast member given more to do is Giamatti, who, as Mr. Exposition, must explain, ad nauseam, why earthquakes happen. “Lost” screenwriter Carlton Cuse, appears to have used only half his keyboard to peck out the script.
“San Andreas” is a natural disaster picture but it didn’t have to be a cinematic disaster. Johnson is charismatic and funny, so why not give him a chance to flex those muscles here? The movie is too earnest by half, from the schmaltzy score that swells underneath the scenes of chaos to the heartfelt reconciliation scenes between Johnson and Gugino—Ahhh… don’t you have something better to do, like rescue your kid, than discuss what went wrong in your marriage right now? Instead, why not have some fun with the over-the-top action? Perhaps it would have been funny to see the snooty woman Gugino is lunching with when the first quake hits get eaten up by the splitting ground. Alas there is no such campy pleasure to be had in “San Andreas.” As it is I hoped the ground would open up and gobble up whole the movie. What a disaster.
Richard’s “Canada AM” flick picks to put you in the mood for New Year’s Eve!
From ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’ to ‘Sleepless in Seattle,’ Richard Crouse reveals his list of movies best suited to ring in the New Year.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
ALL IS LOST: 4 STARS. “All is Lost is The Poseidon Adventure without Shelley Winters.”
“All is Lost” is like “Life of Pi” without the tiger. Or like “The Poseidon Adventure” without Shelley Winters. Or Red Buttons. Or Gene Hackman… or anyone, except Robert Redford.
Redford is a nameless sailor on a solo yacht trip on the Indian Ocean. When his thirty-foot boat collides with an abandoned shipping container he must use all his resources to survive.
That’s it. The old man and the sea… and a yacht with a hole in the side. Like “Gravity,” the other recent “adrift in the great yonder” movie, “All is Lost” is an exercise in immersive cinema. Story is secondary to the character’s journey. There is virtually no narrative, just a boiled down man-against-nature plot and a growing sense of desperation as the sailor’s supplies dwindle.
The drama comes from the surroundings, the harsh world recreated by director J.C. Chandor (whose last film “Margin Call” was an overlooked gem). It’s claustrophobic, made doubly intense by watery sound effects and a building feeling of helplessness portrayed on Redford’s face.
The actor is in every frame of the film and although he only speaks a dozen or so lines—many of which are the monosyllabic utterances of distress you’d expect—he manages to create a compelling persona despite the lack of backstory, context or any of the traditional hangers characters get hung on. He is the essence of the film, a man hell bent on survival against increasingly difficult odds.
“All is Lost” is probably more audacious than it is entertaining, but it showcases Chandor’s nimble footed technique and Redford’s effortless star power. Alone and figuratively naked, he holds the screen for the entire 106 minutes, eloquently commenting on the human condition with no words, just action.
Life of Pi movie inspired by ocean’s raw power by Richard Crouse Metro Canada In Focus Wednesday November 21, 2012
Joseph Conrad wrote of the ocean’s awesome power, “the sea has never beenfriendly to man.” Less eloquent is this quote from Beauty Queens by Libba Bray: “You can’t believe how bleeding scary the sea is! There’s, like, whales and storms and s–t!”
Not to mention killer whales, giant waves and even H-bomb mutated giant octopuses!
The ocean and its power have been challenging cinematic sailors for decades.
From the early screen adaptations of Moby Dick to the crazy sea monsters of 1950s b-movies to this weekend’s The Life of Pi, based on the megahit novel by Yann Martel, the ocean has provided a wet and wild backdrop for Hollywood.
Pi’s story of a boy set adrift on the ocean in a lifeboat with only a tiger for a companion is a coming-of-age story that uses the sea as a metaphor. Most films are more literal.
The giant wave that capsizes the ship in The Poseidon Adventure was no metaphor, it was a terrifying display of the ocean’s power, even if it was filmed using a 21 foot 6 inch long miniature ship in a 300 x 350 foot water tank on a Hollywood stage.
Filmmakers have often looked to sea creatures for inspiration. Everything from LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring to Sharktopus features fantasy monsters unleashed by the deep. One of the best-known b-movies of the 1950s is It Came From Beneath the Sea, the story of a giant octopus awakened by the radiation from H-Bomb tests.
The film was so low budget special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen cut corners by building his octopus model with six rather than the usual eight tentacles. To cover his cheat he posed the creature so viewers couldn’t count the arms.
Finally, Orca, the best known of the killer whale movies, however, shows a much more real threat. Or does it? The joke is that killer whales aren’t all that dangerous—to humans anyway. “There has never been a substantiated case of an orca killing a man,” wrote Outside magazine’s Tim Cahill, “despite the 1977 movie Orca, in which a killer whale seeks revenge on Richard Harris by eating all his costars. The movie was so silly, unscientific and unbelievable that one critic suggested Harris fight a duel to the death with his agent for getting him the role.”
