I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with anchor Zuraidah Alman to talk about the absurdist environmental dramedy “Digger,” the suburban gothic “Verity” and the psychological thriller “Heel.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 13:15)
I join CTV Atlantic’s Bruce Frisko to talk about the absurdist environmental dramedy “Digger,” the suburban gothic “Verity” and the psychological thriller “Heel.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
CAST: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons. Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu.
REVIEW: A study in justification of one’s actions, “Digger” is a dark satire, touched by farce, of narrative control in the face of crisis.
Tom Cruise, disguised by an inch of aging make-up, fake teeth and an elaborate comb-over, plays Digger Rockwell, the world’s most powerful oil tycoon. Eccentric, greedy and immoral—“Mr. Rockwell is a man who would roast our children alive if he thought he could sell them for a dime,” says scientist Ganesh (Riz Ahmed)—he does not like bad news.
When he gets bad news about the stability of one of his oil platforms, he ignores it and the resulting explosion causes havoc, creating aa ice shelf then size of Washington, D.C. on a collision course with Western Europe. “Digger here got us into this mess,” says the President of the United States (John Goodman), “and Digger’s gonna dig us out again.”
Rather than accept blame for the worldwide chaos Digger treats the situation not as a catastrophe but as a branding problem. “Panic is a resource,” he says. “When you’re running away from a house fire no one cares who left the toaster on.”
With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Digger tries to save his company and himself by controlling the narrative. “They know the facts,” he says. “The story is yet to be told.”
Echoes of “Dr. Strangelove” reverberate throughout “Digger.” Both are absurdist nightmare comedies that skewer the egos and ideologies of powerful men, and both focus on managing the narrative of a crisis rather than dealing with it. But the cool, deadpan vibe of Stanley Kubrick’s film is replaced by a passionate, outlandish feel that will certainly divide audiences.
It’s a big movie, filled with big ideas, even if they sometimes get lost in the sheer grandiosity of the filmmaking. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who co-wrote the script with Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone and Sabina Berman, presents a riff on the old saying, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” but in Digger Rockwell’s world corruption goes hand in hand with control because that’s where the power is. Controlling the narrative is more important than solving the problem.
“They know the facts,” he says, “but the story has yet to be told.”
Digger’s a bad guy, ignorant, tacky and narcissistic, but he’s the hero of his own invented narrative and in an era of fake news and misinformation, it’s a timely and scary reality check.
The absurd and often jaundiced take on the machinery of power from Digger’s house to the White House and beyond is not subtle. Iñárritu takes big swings here narratively and stylistically. His ambition pays off in fits and starts. Some scenes, like a sequence of Digger, the President of the United States (John Goodman) and various generals, watching the iceberg collision with land is darkly hilarious, or Cruise’s ten-minute amphitheater monologue, fire on all cylinders.
But overall “Digger” values audacity, ambition and theatrics over narrative clarity. Not funny enough to be a satire, too outrageous to be straight drama, it lands in a tonal wasteland, wavering between silly and sincerity.
The parts of “Digger” that work, however, work very well. John Goodman lets his freak flag fly as the beleaguered POTUS and Riz Ahmed, as the pushed-to-the-brink climate scientist, hands in a career best performance. Cruise nails both the farcical elements of the character but lets the more intimate, realistic moments breathe in a performance that will likely draw attention from the Academy at Oscar time.
Digger Rockwell brags that the world is powered by his fossil fuels, but his movie is fueled by something else: audacity. It is a truly unique film, the kind that doesn’t usually feature such high-priced talent, but this audacious environmental drama is bordered self-indulgence and by times is a chore to sit through.
SYNOPSIS: In “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” the eighth instalment in the franchise now playing in theatres, IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team attempt to save the world from a “truth eating, parasitical AI known as The Entity.” If Hunt and his IMFers (Impossible Missions Force) can find The Entity’s original source code they just might be able to “deceive the Lord of Lies” and save the world. “The whole world is in trouble Ethan,” says former pickpocket-turned-IMF-agent Grace (Hayley Atwell), “and you’re the only one I trust to save it.”
CAST: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny, and Angela Bassett. Directed by Christopher McQuarrie.
REVIEW: “I need you to trust me one last time,” Ethan Hunt says to his team in the new film, but he could be speaking directly to the audience.
For almost thirty years we have come to trust that the “Mission: Impossible” film franchise will deliver sky-high thrills—like Tom Cruise hanging off the side of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building—good looking people in exotic locations and convoluted, exciting stories of espionage, ripe with twists and MacGuffins. Sometimes the movies were needlessly confusing, but they were always entertaining and, “Look! Tom just rode a motorcycle off a 4,000-foot cliff!”
Given the track record, it’s easy to trust Ethan Hunt one last time. It’s easy to believe Cruise and Co will offer blockbuster entertainment for their last time in the clandestine world of the IMF. But, as Ernest Hemingway said, “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
In other words, buy the ticket, take the ride. Your trust will be rewarded with a ponderous, overlong movie that goes out of its way to break the golden “show me, don’t tell me” rule. Endless exposition weighs down scene after scene as Hunt as his team explain their every move and every convoluted plot twist, as if vocalizing the movie’s wild tangents makes them less preposterous.
It’s a talky movie that leans heavily into nostalgia—the first hour is basically a recap with flashbacks—and self-congratulation. It’s disappointing because this series has always valued entertainment over set-up. They haven’t always made sense, but the movies have never failed to make our collective eyeballs dance with big action sequences.
“The Final Reckoning,” however, does give Cruise a chance to indulge in his daredevil tendencies.
An ambitious underwater sequence is a testament to the franchise’s commitment to practical stunts over CGI enhanced imagery. As Cruise swims through the wreck of a sunken Russian submarine the danger and claustrophobia are tangible, and it raises the stakes for Hunt and the movie.
After that, director Christopher McQuarrie, who co-wrote the script with Erik Jendresen, settles back into the film’s talky, laborious vibe until a third reel aerial sequence finally delivers the kind of wowser eye candy we trusted Cruise to deliver. Set 10,000 feet in the air, the death-defying scene sees the star jump between biplanes to thwart the film’s villain, a painfully underused Esai Morales. It’s wild, high-flying action even by Cruise’s superhuman standards.
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” asks for your trust, and, if you’re patient and willing to sit through pages of dialogue to get to the heart-pounding action you expect from a film like this, it earns that trust. But, overall, this explosive franchise goes out with a whimper not a bang.
When the “Mission: Impossible” franchise began in 1996 the movies were big, prestige spy thrillers, heavy on the intrigue and supported by large action sequences. Then came 2011’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” a popcorn flick built around an eye-popping sequence featuring star Tom Cruise scaling the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, with only a pair of suction gloves and courage coming between him and certain death.
That sequence made audience’s eyeballs dance and changed the focus of the franchise. It also turned Cruise into the Evel Knievel of cinematic risk taking.
Since then, the movies have been driven by the death-defying stunts performed by their star, the seemingly fearless Cruise, rather than the convoluted plots of the first batch of films. In the world of “Mission: Impossible” there is no building is too high for Tom to climb, no chasm too wide for him to jump.
The new film, “Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One,” files the actual story down to a nub—”I’m going to need a few more details,” says glamourous international thief Grace (Hayley Atwell), as if commenting on the script. “They tend to get in the way,” replies Benji, nodding his head.—while letting it rip with wild action sequences.
The catalyst for the action is artificial intelligence run amok. Called The Entity, it is an all-powerful machine, “who is everywhere and nowhere” and has no center. “We don’t want to kill it,” says Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), the former director of the Impossible Missions Force, “we want to control it.”
The key to controlling it is, well, a key. Split into two halves, the key only works when made whole. Kittridge’s best chance of intercepting the key is the IMF, a secret group of expert spies made up of Ethan Hunt (Cruise), computer technician Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), field agent Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and sometimes member Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson).
The IMF’s mission, should they choose to accept it, is to retrieve one half of the key from glamourous international thief Grace (Hayley Atwell) before she can sell it to black market arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis (Vanessa Kirby). The fear is Mitsopolis will pass the key’s combined halves to terrorist Gabriel (Esai Morales). “None of our lives can matter more than the mission,” says Stickell.
Cue feats of daring-do and wild action.
“Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning” is the ne plus ultra of modern, big-budget studio filmmaking. Director Christopher McQuarrie manages the breathless, super-sized movies with an expert hand, blending old school action movie filmmaking with real stakes.
Whether it is Cruise flying through the air on a motorcycle or navigating through the streets of Rome in a tiny, but speedy European car or hanging on for dear life as a train car disintegrates around him, the green-screenless action scenes seem to be saying, “Take that Marvel.” The organic stunts, no matter how foolhardy they may be, up the stakes, have real danger to them and set “Dead Reckoning” apart from most action flicks. It is escapism at an eye-watering level.
Tempering the action is some humor and an emphasis on the connections between the characters. Loyalty to the cause has always been paramount in these movies, but the bond between the characters has been tempered, probably because we are near the end of the franchise, by a dose of nostalgia and sentimentality.
Still, this is, first and foremost, an action movie, the characters each have an archetype to fill. Rhames and Pegg are the playful foils, Vanessa Kirby is a deliciously vampy femme fatale and Esai Morales is the kind of baddie who makes grand pronouncements like, “I will disappear like smoke in a hurricane.”
Most notable is the latest lead addition, Grace. She is a slippery character whose motives shift and change with the wind, which makes her interesting. Unlike Isla (Rebecca Ferguson), however, who could handle herself in any situation, Grace is more a damsel in distress, although in the arena of self-preservation, she is a master. She is the kind of character that franchises are built around.
“Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One” isn’t all played at 11. It has peaks and valleys, of course, but the valleys are welcome respite from the sensory overload provided by the spectacle and adrenaline. It is a heckuva mission, satisfying, even if we have to wait a year or more, for the story’s conclusion.
Richard joins the Screenfish Podcast to talk everything “Top Gun: Maverick.”
“In TOP GUN: MAVERICK, Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (Tom Cruise) lives a life of military obscurity until he’s called back as a teacher and mentor to the next generation of pilots. As the past meets the present, Maverick must overcome his deepest fears and pain while training these youthful rookies what it means to make the ultimate sacrifice. This week, Richard Crouse (host of CTV’s #PopLife and Dave Voigt (In The Seats With-ITSPodcast) step into the danger zone to talk about the magic of Tom Cruise, legacy sequels, and the inevitability of age.”
Listen to and watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to talk about the highway to the danger zone and Tom Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
It’s been thirty-six years, but movie goers can once again ride into the danger zone.
Kind of.
Hotheaded test pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) returns to the screen and sky in the high-flying sequel “Top Gun: Maverick,” which, despite the main character’s feats of daring do, plays it mostly by-the-book.
When we first get reacquainted with Captain Maverick, he’s still the hotshot, risky pilot we remember from the first film. His cocky attitude and bad boy behavior has kept him from being promoted. “I’m where I belong,” he says when asked why he’s not an Admiral after decades of distinguished service. He’s popular with his peers but not with the brass, save for his old friend and guardian angel, Admiral Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer in an extended cameo).
“Your reputation precedes you,” says Vice Admiral Beau “Cyclone” Simpson (Jon Hamm). “That’s not a compliment.”
Called back to Top Gun, the United States Navy training program where he learned fighter and strike tactics and technique, Maverick is presented with a last chance for glory. “You fly for Top Gun or you don’t ever fly for the Navy again.”
Cyclone is obviously disdainful of the arrogant Maverick, but acknowledges he is the best person to train twelve of the brightest and best recent Top Gun graduates for a dangerous mission to locate and destroy an underground uranium enrichment site.
For Maverick, the job comes with baggage. It places him in the vicinity of on-again, off-again girlfriend Penny (Jennifer Connelly), a new character, referenced in the first film as the daughter of an admiral. Most dramatically, one of his students is Lieutenant Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick’s late best friend, “Goose,” played by Anthony Edwards in the first film. Rooster holds Maverick responsible for his father’s death and is resistant to Maverick’s training. “My dad believed in you,” he says. “I’m not going to make the same mistake.”
Of the twelve recruits, half will make the cut, one will be the leader, if Maverick can teach them the precision and “Don’t think, just do” attitude needed to come home alive.
“Top Gun: Maverick” screenwriters Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie keep the story simple; a splash of romance, a dash of remorse, some shirtless volleyball and a mountain of eye-popping aerial action. It’s a recipe that echoes the events of the first film to the point of déjà vu. Still, as an exercise in nostalgia, complete with callbacks to the original, and an emotional appearance by Kilmer, “Maverick” works because it blends old and new in a crowd-pleasing way. Unlike other recent 1980s and 1990s reboots, it salutes the original in tribute. Loud and proud, it wears its superficiality on its sleeve in an old fashioned, last century style that is unabashed fan service.
But what really sets the new and old films apart is Cruise. He was a movie star then, and he’s a movie star now, but with age, the stakes for his character are higher. Maverick has a lot to prove, regrets to be dealt with and while the actor doesn’t appear to have aged at all, that trademarked Tom Cruise Run can’t be as easy as it once was. Maverick is a still a hotshot, but here the character is tempered by the sins of the past and a real concern for the future. Cruise’s work shaves some of the hypermasculine edges off Maverick to reveal a more human and humane character than the first time around. It centers the movie with some earthbound emotion to counter the sky-high action.
“Top Gun: Maverick” is a sequel that plays it safe with the story, but lets it rip in the blockbuster action sequences, giving the audience the expected need for speed.
