Richard joins NewsTalk 1010 host David Cooper on the coast-to-coast-to-coast late night “Showgram” to play the game “Did Richard Crouse Like This?” This week we talk about the Viking drama “The Northman,” the surreal Nic Cage homage “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” and the nostalgic documentary “The Automat.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Watch Richard review three movies in less time than it takes to sign your name! Have a look as he races against the clock to tell you about the violent and visceral Viking drama “The Northman,” the surreal Nic Cage movie “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” and the nostalgic documentary “The Automat.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
There is perfect casting and then there is Nicolas Cage, playing a heightened version of himself in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” a meta new action comedy now playing in theatres.
Off screen Cage is a larger-than-life character, an Oscar winner known for his penchant for purchasing dinosaur skulls, tax troubles and wildly uneven cinematic output. He brings the weight of that public persona to this movie, making myth out of his own legend of self-indulgence.
Cage plays Cage as a faded Hollywood prince. Once a box office draw, he’s down on his luck, going broke and in need of a big money gig. He has become the White Claw of serious actors. He’s good, but no one with taste is taking him seriously.
Producers, scared off by his wild-at-heart reputation, give him the Hollywood kiss off. We love you, but are going in a different direction.
Depressed, he decides to leave Hollywood. “I’m done,” he says. “I’m quitting acting. Tell the trades it was a tremendous honour to be part of storytelling and myth-making.”
Before he leaves the life, he gets an offer he can’t refuse. Olive magnate Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) will pay Cage a million dollars to attend his birthday bash in Mallorca. The actor reluctantly agrees, and soon finds himself drinking and cliff-diving at Javi’s beautiful estate.
Javi is a huge fan, with a collection of cage collectibles. “Is this supposed to be me?” cage asks, gesturing at a statue of himself. “It’s grotesque. I’ll give you twenty thousand for it.”
Turns out the starstruck Javi isn’t what he appears. “Do you know who you’re spending time with?” CIA agent Vivian (Tiffany Haddish) asks Cage. “He’s one of the most ruthless men on the face of the earth.” They think Javi kidnapped the daughter of the president of Catalonia to influence an upcoming election.
Vivian and Agent Martin (Ike Barinholtz) recruit Cage to work undercover on Javi’s estate to get to the bottom of the case. “That little girl doesn’t have anyone,” says Vivian, “and if you leave, I don’t know what will happen to her.”
It’s a chance to do some good, but for Cage, it is also the role of a lifetime.
“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” is an entertaining, oddball movie. Essentially a one joke premise—i.e.: Cage as Cage—it plays with the tropes of many of Cage’s films, but doesn’t play as strictly homage or satire. It’s something else. What, exactly, I’m not quite sure.
It’s almost as if this is Nic Cage’s screw you to the folks who deride him for being a working actor who pumps out two or three movies a year. “I’ve always seen this as a job, as work,” he says, as though he feels bogged down by the weight of the critical appraisal of his artistic choices.
But this isn’t a movie about score settling. It’s a silly action comedy, unabashedly interested in entertaining the audience. It occasionally errs, mistaking familiar references from Cage’s filmography for jokes. It’s that “meme-ification”—the pinpointing of Cage call-backs—of the film’s humour that prevents it from becoming a knee slapper all the way through. There are laugh out loud moments, but there are more moments that feel more Instagram ready than cinematic.
Still, “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” is a good time, worth the price of admission to see young Cage advising older Cage and commit the most surreal example of actorly self-love ever seen on film.
Richard speaks to “CTV News at Six” anchor Andria Case about some TIFF highlights and the best movies and television to watch this weekend including the intense Oscar Isaac drama “The Card Counter,” now playing in theatres, the shoot ’em up action flick “Kate” on Netflix.
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 36:43)
Richard joins Ryan Doyle of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show The Rush for Booze and Reviews! Today he talks about how the Moscow Mule was born out of necessity… the necessity to get rid of a few cases of vodka, “The Card Counter” in theatres and TIFF.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard joins CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including Paul Schrader’s austere drama “The Card Counter,” the kick ass “Kate” and rom commy “Finding You.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres, VOD and streaming services including Paul Schrader’s austere drama “The Card Counter,” the kick ass “Kate” and rom commy “Finding You.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard and CKTB Niagara morning show host Tim Denis have a look at Paul Schrader’s austere drama “The Card Counter,” the kick ass “Kate” and rom commy “Finding You” and what TIFF feels like in its first “hybrid” year.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“The Card Counter,” the new film from “Taxi Driver” screenwriter Paul Schrader, now playing in theatres, is less concerned with cheating at cards than it is with the heavy conscience of the main character.
William Tell (Oscar Isaac) is a man with a past. Ex-military, he’s haunted by his time as an enhanced interrogator at Abu Ghraib. These days he’s constantly on the move, trying to out run his past, travelling from town to town working as a professional gambler and card counter, a skill he picked up during a stint at Leavenworth.
His past catches up with him, however, when Cirk (Tye Sheridan) makes the connection between his late father, who was driven to violence and suicide by memories of his time as a torturer, William and their commanding officer Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe). Cirk has a vendetta. He blames Gordo for his father‘s death, and plans revenge.
William sees the messy situation as a chance for redemption. With the help of financial backer LaLinda (Tiffany Haddish), William attempts to right the wrongs of his past, clear his conscience and send Cirk off on a better path.
“The Card Counter” is an austere, intense movie.
Schrader’s trademark anguish permeates every frame. Isaac plays William as a man who has numbed himself to the horrors of his past by adopting a controlled, methodical way of life. It’s his way of reducing memories of “the noise, the smell, the violence” at bay, but he is tormented, and Isaac’s careful performance reveals a man aware that his guilt could overflow at any time. It would’ve been easy to play him as comatose, shut down to real life after the pain he willfully inflicted on others, but Isaac gives him life.
His only way out of the psychic hell his memories put him through on a nightly basis is through helping Cirk to ease the young man’s pain. There are echoes of “Taxi Driver” throughout. Like Travis Bickle, William uses violence to “rescue” an innocent, but unlike Mr. You Talkin’ To Me, William also has a sweet side. His relationship with LaLinda is warm and Haddish’s performance helps show us William’s human side.
Schrader fills “The Card Counter” with not-so-subtle social commentary. One of William’s rivals on the gambling circuit is Mr. U.S.A. (Alexander Babara), a loud and proud player dressed in red, white and blue. He’s an empty shell, a braying show-off whose presence is all sound and fury, signifying nothing. He’s the polar opposite of the self-contained William, a man who has seen the horrors his country endorsed and knows of the personal cost involved. The allegory isn’t delicate but it does feel timely and ripped from the headlines.
“The Card Counter” is another of Schrader’s looks into the soul of, as he called Travis Bickle, “God’s lonely man.” He tempers the darkness with wry humour and even a touch of romance, but make no mistake, trauma lies at the heart of the storytelling, resulting in a tautly told morality play that encompasses the war on terror and the personal cost of military action.
