SYNOPSIS: In “The Instigators,” a new heist comedy film now streaming on Apple TV+, Matt Damon and Casey Affleck play desperate father Rory and ex-con Cobby, unlikely partners thrown together to rob a corrupt politician’s war chest. When the caper goes sideways, the inept thieves hit the road, doing whatever it takes to stay one step ahead of the police, the mayor’s henchman and a vengeful crime boss. “We’ve got to find these guys before the cops do,” says kingpin Dechico (Michael Stuhlbarg), “and put them down before they can talk.”
CAST: Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Hong Chau, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alfred Molina, Jack Harlow, Ving Rhames, Ron Perlman, Paul Walter Hauser, Toby Jones. Directed by Doug Liman.
REVIEW: Fresh off their success in “Oppenheimer,” Damon and Affleck reteam in a movie that mixes-and-matches a caper with a political satire, action with a buddy comedy. It’s a laundry list of genres, but it works, aided by a terrific ensemble cast and the steady hand of director Doug Liman.
Liman and Damon, of course, first worked together twenty-two years ago on “The Bourne Identity.” While their new movie features some action, a really solid car chase and exploding buildings, the two characters, super spy Jason Bourne and the down-on-his-luck Rory, are polar opposites.
Bourne suffered from psychogenic amnesia, and used his special set of skills to rediscover his past. Rory is very much aware of his past, of his failings as a father, and Damon plays him as an everyman, a desperate guy who’ll do whatever it takes to make a few extra bucks for his estranged family, no matter the cost to him personally. Damon skilfully balances the character’s backstory with the increasing absurdity of his present-day situation.
In a rare humorous performance, Affleck is the more obviously funny character, and yet, Cobby is not just comedic construct. He’s a small-timer, used to things going sideways, and much of the humor in the film comes from his deadpan reactions as their situation worsens.
In a strong supporting cast, featuring heavy-weights like Michael Stuhlbarg and Alfred Molina in what are essentially extended cameos, Hong Chau as Rory’s psychiatrist, is a standout, both empathetic and hilarious.
“The Instigators” has everything you expect from a film about a heist gone wrong, but really, it’s not about the robbery or the explosions. It’s about the budding friendship between Rory and Cobby. Brought together by adversity and desperation, they become unlikely allies in a film that cleverly and humorously breathes new life into the failed-criminals-on-the-run genre, through interesting characters, some high-powered action and genuinely funny situations.
The artefact at the heart of the action in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is a time shifting device called the Antikythera. This ancient, analogue computer with the power to find fissures in time, however, isn’t the only thing about the movie that revisits the past.
Everything old is new again in director James Mangold’s vision of the classic action-adventure. There’s the much talked about de-aging of Ford, the grand old man of action-adventure which effectively brings backs the classic Indy of the original film, and the reappearance of much-loved characters like John Rhys-Davies as Sallah. Even the new characters, like Helena, played by “Fleabag’s” Phoebe Waller-Bridge, feels like a throwback to the characters invented by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas when Ronald Reagan was still in office.
The action begins in 1944. Indy (the de-aged Ford) risks everything to help his colleague Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) keep Nazi scientist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) from getting his hands on
a mysterious dial known as the Antikythera. Used properly, the dial has the ability to manipulate time, and say, change the outcome of a certain war. “Hitler made mistakes,” says Voller. “And with this, I will correct them all.”
Cut to twenty-five years later. America has just landed on the moon, and the nation is jubilant but it is a jubilation the weathered Indy does not share. In the wake of his separation from
Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) and the death of his son, he starts each day with a shot of booze and a bad attitude.
On the eve of his retirement from teaching, a face from the past shows up. Helena Shaw (Waller-Bridge) is Basil Shaw’s daughter, Indy’s estranged goddaughter, an archeologist and a thief. Her interest in the Antikythera lures Indy back into a world of international adventure, former Nazis and the echoes of history come to life. “You’ve taken your chances, made your mistakes,” Helena says to Indy, “and now, a final triumph!”
Nothing is likely to ever live up to the adrenaline rush of seeing “Raiders of the Lost Ark” for the first time. The expert balance of action, comedy, suspense and mysticism is a cut above and nearly impossible to duplicate. The retro newness of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is an attempt to recapture the magic, and it does deliver a hefty dose of whip-crackin’ thrills, but like the de-aged Ford in the film’s opening twenty minutes, it doesn’t exactly feel like the real thing.
It is, however, respectful of what came before. Mangold transcends the film’s recycled nature with some exciting action set pieces, and even if the stunts don’t feel as organic as they did the first time around, they deliver a welcome blast of vintage Indy action. There’s even a callback to Indy’s well-known fear of snakes. A highlight is a wild chase through the streets and alleyways of Tangier that mixes humor, action and peril in equal measure.
Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael captures the classic Indy look, an aesthetic and color palette that disappeared sometime around “Crystal Skull.” Visually, it’s like a warm hug that spans back decades.
Of course, the crucial element is Ford. He may need more CGI to hopscotch around on the top of trains and through sunken caves these days, but he brings the OG 70s movie star mojo and a Traveller’s hat full of charisma that has not diminished over the years. There is a poignancy to Ford’s lion-in-winter portrayal of the character, and, as a result, (NO SPOILERS HERE) there is an emotional component to the film’s final reel, as Indy confronts the anguish he feels, that may be the most touching moment in the entire series.
He’s ably assisted by the wisecracking Waller-Bridge and stoically evil Mikkelsen.
The story and action in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” gets slowed down from time-to-time by too much talk of the Lance of Longinus, Polybius Squares and the Ear of Dionysius. Mangold makes up for those moments with John Williams’s rousing, signature score and a wild, and unexpected third reel payoff. The movie may not turn back the clock to have the cultural impact of the original, but it is a lot of fun.
On this edition of the Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet Noah Pink, screenwriter of a new movie called “Tetris,” starring Taron Egerton, and now playing on Apple TV+, that tells the story of how Dutch video game designer Henk Rogers fit the differently shaped pieces of international intrigue and video game creation together to secure the intellectual property rights to popular game. It’s a story of international intrigue, the Cold War and of the deep friendship that grew between entrepreneur Henk Rogers and the game’s Russian creator Alexey Pajitnov.
Then, Gregory Sestero, star of the found footage film “Infrared.” In the film he plays the creepy caretaker of an abandoned schoolhouse. If Greg’s name rings a bell, it’s likely because you’ve attended one of the midnight madness screenings of “The Room,” a movie so deliciously awful, it has become a cult favorite since its release in 2003. Gregory turned the experience of making the so-bad-it’s-a-hoot movie into a book, which eventually went on to become the Oscar nominated movie “The Disaster Artist,” starring James Franco and Seth Rogen. We talk about “Infrared” and whether or not, twenty years on, if “The Room” is an embarrassment or a source of pride.
Finally, we go to the vault to hear a vintage interview I did with Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman. We don’t talk superheroes, instead, the actor gets personal, talking about the projects that worked, the ones that didn’t and what drives him.
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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Listen to the whole thing HERE! (Link coming soon)
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!
Listen to the show live here:
C-FAX 1070 in Victoria
SAT 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM
SUN 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
CJAD in Montreal
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
CFRA in Ottawa
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 610 CKTB in St. Catharines
Sat 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1010 in Toronto
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1290 CJBK
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
AM 1150 in Kelowna
SAT 11 PM to Midnight
BNN BLOOMBERG RADIO 1410
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
Click HERE to catch up on shows you might have missed!
The addictive puzzle video game “Tetris,” created by Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov, couldn’t be simpler. Stack differently shaped pieces to form a whole and win points.
The story behind its success isn’t.
A new movie starring Taron Egerton and now playing on Apple TV+, tells the story of how Dutch video game designer Henk Rogers fit the differently shaped pieces of international intrigue and video game creation together to secure the intellectual property rights to popular game.
“The Soviet Union has worldwide rights,” says Rogers. “Nothing gets out easily.”
And how. In what is essentially a big business ticking clock story, Egerton is Rogers, an aggressive entrepreneur who discovers an early version of the simple game at the Consumer Electronics Show in the mid-1980s. An early adopter of video game technology, Rogers knows Tetris can be a hit.
“It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” he says. “I played for five minutes, and I still see falling blocks in my dreams. It is poetry. It is the perfect game.”
Developed by a Russian government software engineer Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov) in 1984, the game was an underground hit in the USSR, and starting to attract attention from other big players. The underdog Rogers finds himself up against Nintendo, media mogul Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam) and the Russian government.
“You want to play with the big boys?” threatens Maxwell. “This is how the world works.”
“Tetris” is a convoluted tale of how Rogers navigates dubious agreements, business backstabbing and the very real threat of Russian prison, to secure the rights to the game and a future for his family. Unlike the game, the movie’s pieces don’t fit together easily. Part business story, part spy thriller, it piles a great deal of information into every scene, beginning with an unloading of exposition off the top that sets the scene, but may try the patience.
Once past the initial mound of info, screenwriter Noah Pink keeps up the pace, piling double-crosses on top of political scheming on top of jet setting skullduggery. It zips along at the speed of level 10 game play, and while it is sometimes hard to keep track of who is zooming who, Pink keeps it fairly linear, mostly focusing on how the various deals affect Rogers. Told from this point of view, the complicated story of contract law and how the negotiations for a video game became a Cold War concern, is marginally easier to follow.
At the center of it all is the elaborately mustachioed Egerton. As Rogers he brings an energizer bunny approach to the entrepreneur’s unrelenting belief in the game and himself. As the story gets bigger and bigger—Henk against the world—it is Egerton that provides the human element, particularly in his friendship with Pajitnov. The surrounding performances are rather broad, but Egerton keeps it real.
Although it does feature 8-bit animation, “Tetris” isn’t a video game movie. Instead, it is a John Le Carre Lite political thriller, which could have used some of the simplicity of the game whose story it tells.
Adapted from Louis Bayard’s 2003 novel of the same name, “The Pale Blue Eye,” a somber new Christian Bale murder mystery now streaming on Netflix, begins with a grisly murder in a society that favors discretion.
Set at West Point Military Academy in upstate New York, circa 1830, the story kicks off on a chilly day, an atmospheric note that informs the tone of the film. A cadet is found dead, hanging from a tree on the grounds. What appears to be a case of a young man taking his own life, becomes suspicious when it is discovered his heart has been removed post mortem.
Hoping to avoid a public scandal, West Point enlists Augustus Landor (Christian Bale), a local detective still smarting from the loss of his only daughter, to quietly solve the case. Hindered by the academy’s strict code of silence, Landor gets a break when meets an eccentric young cadet at a local tavern. “I am an artist,” he flamboyantly declares, “I have no nation.” The man, Edgar Allen Poe (Harry Melling), is a poet and truth seeker whose ambitions lay in the written word, not the stuffy traditions of the military.
“Poe,” Landor says, “I need you to discretely infiltrate the cadets.”
A fictional story, “The Pale Blue Eye” inserts Poe, credited with inventing the American detective story, into this tale of intrigue. The poet, sans his famous moustache, did attend West Point, and after two years of service, attained the rank of Sergeant Major for Artillery, but that is where any similarity to reality ends.
Poe, as played by Melling, is arguably the film’s most entertaining character, the only one cut loose from the restraint that casts a pall over the proceedings like a shroud. Bale raises his voice a few times, breaking his character’s unshakable, flinty self-possession, but it is Melling, and his ostentatious demeanor that brings the, as he says, “hot thrashing flurry,” to break free of the movie’s gothic shackles.
Writer, director Scott Cooper sprinkles engaging supporting performances throughout. As the wife of the very proper Dr. Marquis (Toby Jones), Gillian Anderson’s low rumbling voice gives her character a malevolent edge, and it’s a treat to see Robert Duvall as occult expert Jean-Pepe, even if his role is under-written.
“The Pale Blue Eye” is a handsomely mounted, pulpy murder mystery, with some fine performances, but its methodical pace and bleak nature clip its wings, and don’t allow it to make like the E.A.P.’s Raven and take flight.
“Empire of Light,” a new drama from director Sam Mendes, takes almost two hours to deliver the same magic-of-the-movies message Nicole Kidman’s AMC advertisement drove home in just one minute and one second.
Set in 1981, Olivia Colman plays Hilary Small, a lonely duty manager at a Margate cinema called The Empire. She is fastidious, detail oriented and on top of every little thing, even if she doesn’t really care for the movies she shows in their beautiful Art Deco auditoriums. “They’re for the customers,” she says.
Her personal life is as messy as her work life is ordered. An illicit affair with her boss, Mr. Ellis (Colin Firth), the theatre’s general manager, is a study in power imbalance and an unnamed mental illness leaves her unable to sleep and reliant on lithium to maintain equilibrium.
Stephen (Micheal Ward), a new theatre employee, fits in perfectly with the others, Neil (Tom Brooke), punk rocker Janine (Hannah Onslow) and projectionist Norman (Toby Jones) but really sparks with Hilary, even though she is many years his senior.
At the theatre romance blossoms between them, but in the outside world the rise of the National Front troubles Stephen, and he is regularly harassed by skinheads simply because he is a Black man living in Britain.
As Mr. Ellis prepares to host the regional gala premier of “Chariots of Fire,” events conspire to change the nature of Hilary and Stephen’s relationship, and perhaps the rest of their lives.
“Empire of Light” takes on a lot but does not seamlessly blend its many ideas into a whole. A study of racism, mental illness, power structures and the transformative power of the movies, it is splintered into too many pieces to work as a cohesive story. When Mendes focusses his camera on Hilary and Stephen the movie finds its power, when he does not, it drifts.
Colman, in the film’s most demanding role, once again proves her remarkable ability to inhabit a character. Hilary is a complex person, and as her depression grips, she boards an emotional rollercoaster. Colman carefully and sensitively portrays that aspect of Hilary’s life in a terrific performance, filled with humanity and sympathy.
Opposite Colman in the film’s best scenes is Ward. As Stephen, in a career making performance, he brings empathy to the film. In one of his early moments, he helps a pigeon with a broken wing. That action could have served as an overworked metaphor, given his budding relationship with the damaged Hilary, but instead establishes Stephen’s innate decency in a world that does not always return the favor. Conversely, Ward’s steeliness comes through in several scenes of outrageous racism.
At its heart “Empire of Light” is a love letter to film and grand old movie palaces like The Empire. But once again, Mendes uses the metaphors like a jackhammer on concrete. In an impassioned speech, Toby Jones, who calls the theatre’s projectors his “babies,” explains the magic of the movies to Stephen. “Still images with darkness in between,” he says. “If I run them at 24 frames a second, you don’t see the darkness.” Jones delivers the line with breathless reverence, as if the idea that film as a panacea for all that ails us was something new instead of a clunky metaphor. The “Cinema Paradiso-esque” veneration is well intended, but, given the film’s essaying of racism and mental illness, feels overstated and trite.
One thing is for sure, the “Jurassic Park” movies are not an endangered species. The film series, now entering its fourth iteration since 1993’s prehistoric original, has outlived most other monster movie franchises of its vintage. With another one already scheduled for 2021 the dinos-gone-wild-movies show no signs of extinction. It seems audiences have an endless appetite to see people become dinosaur snacks.
The new one, “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” picks up three years after the “de-extinct” dinosaurs destroyed Isla Nublar, the island paradise where “Jurassic World” took place. Now abandoned and overrun by dinosaurs, the former theme park and its inhabitants face a new threat—“the flashpoint animal rights issue of our time,” we’re told—in the form of a volcano poised cover everything in a thick layer of molten lava.
Some people, like Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), feel nature should be allowed to take its course even if that means the end of the dinosaurs. Others, like Sir Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), John Hammond’s partner in developing the dinosaur clone technology, want to see them rescued. Enter two former park employees, dinosaur trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt)—the Cesar Millan of the dinosaur world—and former park director Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and small team of helpers, computer whiz and comic relief Franklin (Justice Smith) and paleo veterinarian Zia (Daniella Pineda) who spearhead a campaign to relocate the creatures to a newer, safer sanctuary. “Save the dinosaurs from an island that is about to explode,” says Owen. “What could go wrong?” Lots. There’s more, like a nefarious plan to sell the rescued dinosaurs and a “creature of the future made from pieces of the past” but who cares as long as the creatures are let loose.
Sure enough, half-an-hour into “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” after some call backs and set up, dinos are chasing humans, summing up the two most important elements of the Jurassic franchise—giant dinosaurs and people for them to eat. Other stuff, like narrative logic, plain old common sense and interesting characters, come a distant second to gnarling teeth and big action set pieces.
The usual franchise mumbo jumbo about science tampering with the natural world is in place but it’s even more cursory than in the first “World” film. Instead it embraces the thing that has always been at the rapidly beating heart of these movies, monster mayhem and on that level it succeeds.
Ultimately, however, the stakes are very low. It is obvious who will become a dinosaur entree and who won’t. Also much of the danger has been replaced by more family friendly light moments—i.e. Owen doing a tranquilized acrobatic act to escape molten lava or Franklin’s ladder gag. There is some suspense, but it’s not subtle like Alfred Hitchcock style suspense. Instead it’s will-Owen-get-eaten-by-a-dinosaur-as-Claire-and-Franklin-roll-away-into-a-giant-motorized-orb suspense.
By the end credits what do we learn about “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”? Chris Pratt could probably outrun Tom Cruise without breaking a sweat. The rules of physics and do not apply in Dino Land. When you have dinosaurs you don’t need much else and some sequels are easier to set up than others.
Secrets and lies lay at the heart of the latest film from Austrian auteur Michael Haneke. One extended family’s dysfunction drives the ironically titled “Happy End” but it is the film’s attitude toward its upper crust characters that makes it both satirical and cruel.
From the top down is octogenarian patriarch, the fragile Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant); his daughter Anne (Isabelle Huppert) who inherited the family construction business; son Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz), a doctor who can’t help but cheat on his new wife Anaïs (Laura Verlinden). Anne’s son Pierre (Franz Rogowski), is a drunk who is at odds with his bourgeois background while Thomas’s daughter from his first marriage, 13-year-old Eve (Fantine Harduin), is a sullen presence with cell phone constantly in hand.
Anne is in crisis mode, dealing with an industrial accident at one of their worksites, a catastrophe that may have been caused by Pierre’s carelessness. Thomas is embroiled in a kinky on-line affair with cellist (Loubna Abidar) and Georges has lost the will to live. Their lives are disintegrating but, almost unnoticed, are the troubles of the possibly sociopathic Eve.
In French with English subtitles, “Happy End” takes a meandering look at a family on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Each character brings a level of dysfunction to the tale but it is the eldest and youngest actors who are the most compelling. Haneke regular Trintignant is a commanding presence, a man battling dementia whose moments of clarity bring with them a search for a way to end his suffering. Harduin plays Eve in the Haneke tradition. She is both innocent and malicious, a young girl who inspires both sympathy and fear.
All the performances are top notch but Trintignant and Harduin keep things interesting in a story that feels unfocused. The director’s interest in distancing himself from the story through technology—in this case cell phone videos that document some of the disturbing action—is very much in place, but fails to create the air of menace he has so effectively evoked in previous films. The final shot will send a chill down your spine but it is too little too late. The murky story, which also includes a timely but underdeveloped subplot involving Syrian immigrant workers, is too fractured to add up to a cohesive tale of family trauma.
“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare asked in “Romeo and Juliet. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” True that, but at the movies a name can make or break a film.
“Anthropoid” is the obscure title of a new thriller starring Jamie “Fifty Shades of Grey” Dornan and Cillian Murphy as soldiers who try and assassinate SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. In real life their operation was called Operation Anthropoid, but in reel life the title sounds like a sci fi story. Will the title resonate with anyone who isn’t a World War II aficionado?
Set in 1942 Dornan and Murphy play Czechoslovakian operatives Jan Kubiš and Josef Gabčík who return to Nazi-occupied Prague to kill Heydrich, one of the main architects of the Holocaust. The pair hide out with a family, where the fetching daughter Marie (Charlotte Le Bon) catches Jan’s eye, while her feisty friend Lenka (Anna Geislerová) bonds with Josef personally and in sympathy with his dangerous mission. Their best laid plans are turned upside down, and pushed ahead a few days, when Heydrich’s schedule changes. Rushed, the plan (MILD SPOILER) does not quite go as planned and the men and their compatriots are forced to go into hiding in the basement of a local church as the Nazis mount a massive manhunt.
Much of “Anthropoid” is spent with Jan and Josef as they make their way to Prague and plan the assassination. Unfortunately director Sean Ellis’s attempts to personalize the heroic tale fall flat, with good actors doing bad accents and a stultifying pace that sucks much of the excitement out of what should have been a volatile, dramatic situation. It’s only after the assassination attempt that the character work of the first hour pays off. It’s a shame Ellis couldn’t spread the story’s intensity around a little more evenly.
