SYNOPSIS: Based on Stephen King’s 2020 novella of the same name, “The Life of Chuck,” a new science fiction drama starring Tom Hiddleston now playing in theatres, begins as an apocalyptic drama but, by the film’s end, reveals itself to be a life-affirming look at the way we embrace the fleeting experience of life.
CAST: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Jacob Tremblay, Matthew Lillard and Mark Hamill. Written and directed by Mike Flanagan.
REVIEW: Many people die in “The Life of Chuck,” the winner of the People’s Choice Award at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Young people, middle-aged people, old people. In fact, by the end of the film’s opening half hour, it’s suggested that everyone is a goner. And still, the film, adapted from a Stephen King novella of the same name, manages to be tearily life affirming in its compact hour and 45-minute run time.
Structurally “The Life of Chuck” is challenging, divided into three stand-alone, but related pieces.
It begins at the end with Act 3. Chiwetel Ejiofor is Marty, high school teacher and ex-husband of Felicia (Karen Gillan). As the world crumbles around them—California falls into the sea, the internet is gone, earthquakes and wildfires are ravaging most of the planet and entire species of birds and fish disappear overnight—they struggle to understand the billboards and TV ads that thank Charles “Chuck” Krantz for “39 Great Years” that suddenly appear everywhere. “It’s all Krantz all the time,” Marty says. “Anyone know who he is?”
Act 2 focuses on Chuck’s (Tom Hiddleston) adult life, including an afternoon spent dancing with a stranger in public.
Act 1 ties the segments together with a look at Chuck as a youngster and his introduction to the vagaries of life. “You contain multitudes,” says his teacher, placing her hands on either side of his head. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
“The Life of Chuck” is an eclectic film with an odd upside-down presentation, but its themes are anything but strange. A chronical of a life’s journey, it reveals, like Amanda Marshall sang, that everybody, even an “ordinary” accountant like Chuck, has “a story that’ll break your heart.”
A mix of memories, dance and family bonds paint an empathetic portrait of an everyman who, as Walt Whitman said, “contains multitudes.” Chuck is a surrogate for all of us, a microcosm of the inner universe of experience, emotions, and connection that give color to all our lives. And while the movie grapples with mortality, it’s not a downer. Instead, it’s a vibrant testament to the small moments that make up a life, and how small gestures can imprint on those around you.
Once you get acclimatized to the wonky backwards structure, director Mike Flanagan’s abstract commentary on life and legacy gels and the appreciation of life, even in the face of death, becomes clear. It’s sentimental, but never syrupy. It’s heartfelt but not overbearing. It is just like the character of Chuck: likable, multi-layered and nuanced.
On the Saturday June 7, 2025 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet magician and New York Times crossword constructor David Kwong. A Harvard graduate with a passion for the history of magic, he created “The Enigmatist,” an acclaimed theatrical show combining immersive puzzles and illusions that the Chicago Reader said, has one a-ha moment after another. David brings the show to Toronto at the Black Box Theatre until June 22. Get more info tickets at starvoxent.com.
Then, we’ll get to know Matthew Lillard, one of the stars of the new film “The Life of Chuck,” an adaptation of a Stephen King novella. You know him as Stu Macher in “Scream,” and became a household name as Shaggy Rogers in the live-action Scooby-Doo films. Today we talk about stepping into Stephen King’s world, especially in a non-horror story like The Life of Chuck.
Finally, we’ll meet Nashville-based, P.E.I. raised rising country artist Alli Walker, who was recently announced as the opener for Shania Twain’s Toronto show on July 16 at The Theatre at The Great Canadian Casino Resort. This marks Alli’s second time sharing the stage with Shania—following their viral moment at the 2024 Churchill Music Festival, where Shania invited Alli onstage to showcase her bagpipe skills, captivating millions online.
With a unique blend of traditional country sounds and pop/rock sensibilities, showcased in hits like “I Like Big Trucks,” “Creek,” and “Dirt On Us,” Alli has quickly become one of the most exciting voices in the genre.
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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The stop-motion geniuses at Aardman Animation are the kings of the underdog. They’ve given us stories of chickens rebelling against farm owners, a sheep who takes charge and leads the flock to safety and hapless adventurer Wallace. In their latest, “Early Man,” there’s a Bronze Age twist to the small fry tale.
A prologue informs us that humans survived the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs. (Remember, this is all humour, not history.) What good could come out of that life-changing catastrophe? The invention of football. Using stones for goalposts, the prehistoric humans starting kicking the meteorite around to create the game that would become the world’s most popular sport.
Cut to a few ages later, near Manchester, around lunchtime. A Stone Age clan, including a spunky caveman named Dug (voice of Eddie Redmayne) and his sidekick Hognob (Nick Park), find themselves rocked by a new era. Bronze Age villain Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston with an exaggerated French accent) has plans to invade Dug and Co.’s comfortable life, seizing their land to turn it into a mine. “The age of stone is over!” he says. “Long live the age of bronze!” It’s up to Dug and his people to protect the interest of the tribe against the more sophisticated enemy, but how? By challenging Nooth’s best football team, Real Bronzio, to a match, that’s how.
“Early Man” is a romp about football, survival and teamwork. It also features some of the best (read worst) Premier League puns. “They’re playing well, early man… United,” usually delivered by characters speak English and crack wise like British music hall comedians. It’s silly stuff, part Flintstones, part kiddie “Quest for Fire,” and while it does contain quite a few laughs it doesn’t have the same anarchic spirit of earlier Aardman films. It’s entertaining, good-natured and I think kids will like it—especially the T-Rex sized duck who is both a menace and a help to the Brutes—but it feels like middleweight Aardman.
Over the course of six movies, Thor has been portrayed as a muscle-bound sex symbol; a larger-than-life hero with Shakespearean tendencies, but New Zealander Taika Waititi thinks he has fully realized the character’s potential.
“How do you get the audience to relate to superheroes?” asks Waititi, director of Thor: Ragnarok. “If you take all of them individually from these Marvel or DC movies, they’re very hard to relate to. I can’t relate to the Incredible Hulk other than I get angry sometimes. Thor is essentially a rich kid from outer space. I can’t relate to that so how do you bring them down to our level and give them our kind of problems? That was something we focused on quite heavily in this film even to the point where we have Hulk and Thor sitting on a bed after an argument talking about feelings. We humanized them a bit more and put them in situations we’ve all been in.
“We also took away his hammer and banished him across the universe. He’s really just trying to get home. We’ve all tried to get home at four in the morning, lost, wandering the streets. That’s what this is. We’ve basically made After Hours in space.”
Thor: Ragnarok’s plot sounds like it could be from any generic Avengers film — a world is at stake — but there is no other superhero movie that would see their champions escape through an interdimensional portal named The Devil’s Anus. Yes, there is serious subtext about genocide and displaced persons but thanks to Waititi this is the first Marvel movie to really value comedy over spectacle.
“I had to be respectful of the source material and where the film fit in with all the other things they are doing,” Waititi said. “My whole thing was to give my take on this film and try and make the best film I could whilst letting Marvel keep me in my lane, making sure I didn’t veer off too far to the left or right with their precious character.”
Waititi has remained true to the core of what fans will expect from the crown prince of Asgard as played by Chris Hemsworth, but this time around the Norse God is not exactly your father’s Thor.
“This is a way more colourful and vibrant take on the character and the kind of adventures he has,” the director says. “We borrowed a lot of that design from the great artist Jack Kirby. So right from the start we pulled away from that desaturated, dark style from a lot of other superhero movies. We’re being unapologetic about wanting for this to be a fun adventure through the cosmos and filling it with incredible characters and monsters. It feels like this film was made by six-year-olds. I don’t know if there is any colour left that we haven’t either put into the poster or into the movie.”
Thor: Ragnarok is the Oscar-nominated filmmaker’s first Hollywood movie. He’s best known for oddball work like Boy, Hunt for the Wilderpeople and the horror comedy What We Do in the Shadows, but says his Marvel film shares the same DNA as his smaller movies.
“I definitely feel like this is a Taika Waititi film,” he says. “It could live comfortably in the box set.”
Depending on which side of the interdimensional divide you sit on, superhero movies are either the best thing to happen to Hollywood since the invention of buttered popcorn or the worst thing to happen to film since Steven Seagal.
Before we decide if The Hulk et al are ruining Hollywood, let’s define what a superhero movie is.
This weekend’s Thor: Ragnarok is most definitely a superhero film. It features characters with godlike abilities dedicated to protecting the public from archenemies.
Most superhero flicks — a genre David Fincher refers to as “spandex, blockbuster tentpoles” — whether they are comedic outer-space operas like Guardians Of The Galaxy or heist flicks like Ant-Man, are bound by straightforward morality and the idea that good always prevails over evil.
“It’s a very delicate time right now on Earth,” said Man Of Steel’s Michael Shannon, “and there’s a lot going on that is pretty frightening. It would be nice to believe or think that there was somebody that could protect us from that.”
Director James Wan adds, “All the good superheroes have some kind of social commentary about why they are who they are. It teaches values and so it’s a very important thing.”
The studios — with Marvel leading the charge — have raked in billions of dollars peddling bigger-than-life movies to fan boys and girls but are they self-defeating? Are Batman and Wolverine really ruining the movie business?
Oscar winner William Friedkin thinks so. “Films used to be rooted in gravity. They were about real people doing real things. Today cinema in America is all about Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Avengers, Hunger Games: all kinds of stuff that I have no interest in seeing at all.”
Marvel Cinematic Universe architect Kevin Feige, the man largely responsible for the influx of cinematic superheroes, disagrees. “If you look through the decades of people who’ve been accused of that — Star Wars ruined Hollywood, Steven Spielberg ruined Hollywood —I’ll be in that company any day of the week.”
That’s a flippant answer to a hotly debated and complicated question. At the heart of the discussion is the notion that bigger is always better. Does Hollywood’s love of bombast come at the expense of new ideas? Has the sheer scale of Avengers and Company movies made studios greedy, interested only in brands that will gross hundreds of millions. Why spend $5 million to gross $25 million, the theory goes, when you can spend $180 million on an established brand and make $1 billion?
Others worry that the episodic, homogenous nature of continuing superhero storylines aren’t challenging.
The truth is Wonder Woman and Friends haven’t sucked all the oxygen out of the room. The superhero bubble exists but the commercial and artistic success of movies like Get Out and Colossal balances out the equation. Superheroes may provide bang for the buck but smaller, original films are coming back into vogue.
The world of cinema is a big place. There’s room for both Thor: Ragnarok and The Florida Project. The fact we’re seeing a renaissance of small films playing alongside their risky bigger budget cousins like Dunkirk, signals studios walking back on their commitment to only making astronomically priced superhero movies.
So superheroes haven’t ruined Hollywood. They may be popular now but as Feige says, “As soon as there are a bunch of them that are terrible, that’s when it will end.”
“Darling, you have no idea what is possible.” So says Hela (Cate Blanchett), Thor’s Goddess of Death sister.
She’s a piece of work who thinks nothing of drowning a whole race of people in their own blood to get what she wants, but she has a point. Up until this point no one really knew what was possible with the Thor (Chris Hemsworth) character. Over the course of six movies we’ve seen the crown prince of Asgard as a larger-than-life hero with Shakespearean tendencies and a muscle-bound sex symbol but it took director New Zealand director Taika Waititi to fully realize the character’s potential. Thor has always been quick with a line, but this time around Waititi puts the comedy upfront.
The plot of “Thor Ragnarok” is less interesting than its tone. In a nutshell Thor’s sister, the hella-deadly Hela is back from exile and with Odin (Anthony Hopkins) out of the way, is first in line for the throne of Asgard. She, equipped with an impressive set of black antlers and ruthless nature, plans to go Ragnarok on the citizens of Asgard to fulfill her appetite for destruction.
After some tomfoolery with giant demon Surtur (Clancy Brown)—“Oh, that’s your crown,” Thor purrs. “I thought it was a big eyebrow.”—Thor returns to Asgard, reunites with mischievous brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) before literally locking horns with Hela and hurled through space and into the hands of the quirky Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum), a colourfully dressed ruler who offs people with his dreaded Melt Stick and pits the Norse god against his old friend Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) in a gladiatorial match. With Asgard at stake Thor recruits the giant green world breaker and a warrior Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) to save his planet.
That sounds like it could be the plot from any generic Avengers film—a world is at stake—but there is no other superhero movie that would see their champions escape through an interdimensional portal named The Devil’s Anus. Yes, there is serious subtext about genocide and displaced persons—we hear Led Zep’s “Immigrant Song” twice—but this is the first Marvel movie to value comedy over spectacle. The trademarked Marvel blockbuster action is still there but the gags carry the show.
Certainly “Thor: Ragnarok” is the polar opposite of rival DC’s dark universe but even in its own house, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s a breath of fresh air. Seventeen movies in Marvel has taken a chance, handing the reins over to an idiosyncratic helmer. Waititi’s (who also plays a talkative Groot-like gladiator named Korg) first big studio movie after whimsical indies the adventure comedy “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” feels as close to an auteur film as we’re likely to see in this genre. He brings a zippy sense of fun that showcases Hemsworth’s comedy chops.
Like the rest of the Avengers movies “Thor: Ragnarok” is a tad long and, near the end is overrun by creatures and CGI. Some will complain that the glib tone completely overrides the film’s serious side but the gags and the home-is-where-the-heart-is message make this one of the most human and humane MCU movies yet.
Only two things are sure about Skull Island. First, it is home to Megaprimatus kong a.k.a. King Kong and a menagerie of prehistoric creatures. Second, as Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) says in this weekend’s Kong: Skull Island, “We don’t belong here.”
The latest adventures of King Kong take place almost entirely on the island but what, exactly, do we know about the place?
Not much, because Skull Island is uncharted and changes from film to film.
In the new movie, a digital map image suggests the island derived its intimidating name from its gorilla skull profile shape but originally the isle wasn’t called Skull Island. The best-known versions of the Kong story, the original 1933 Merian C. Cooper film and the 1976 Dino De Laurentiis production, never mention Skull Island.
The first movie and its subsequent novelisation describe a “high wooded island with a skull-like knob” called Skull Mountain while the ‘76 film refers to Beach of the Skull. It wasn’t until 2004’s Kong: King of Skull Island illustrated novel that the name was first used. Since then the moniker has stuck.
The same can’t be said for its location.
Over the years it’s been pegged everywhere from the coast of Indonesia and southwest of Central America to the Bermuda Triangle and the Coral Sea off the east coast of Australia.
In reality many places have subbed in for the island. In 1933 several locations were pieced together to create Kong’s home.
Outdoor scenes were shot at Long Beach, California and the caves at Bronson Canyon near Griffith Park in Los Angeles. Everything else was filmed on a soundstage in Culver City using odds and ends from other sets. The giant Skull Mountain gate was later reused in Gone with the Wind’s burning of Atlanta sequence.
De Laurentiis spared no expense bringing the island to life in 1976, moving the entire crew to the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
The shoot began at the remote Honopu Beach, a place the crew were told was deserted. Arriving in four helicopters laden with equipment they were greeted by a honeymooning couple who, thinking they had the place to themselves, had slept nude on the beach.
The impressive stone arch seen in the film — “Beyond the arch, there is danger, there is Kong!” — was natural and so huge years later when an episode of Acapulco Heat was filmed there a helicopter flew underneath it.
Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong reboot used a combination of New Zealand’s picturesque Shelly Bay and Lyall Bay as Skull Island’s “jungle from hell.” In the film’s closing credits the director paid tongue-in-cheek tribute to all the stars of the 1933 movie, calling them, “The original explorers of Skull Island.”
This weekend’s installment was shot in Vietnam, Queensland, Australia and Kualoa Ranch, Hawaii, where giant sets were built near where Jurassic World was filmed.
The scenery, as John Goodman’s character says, is “magnificent,” but there was also a practical reason to shoot in these exotic locations. The Hollywood Reporter stated the production shot in Australia to take advantage of a whopping 16.5% location offset incentive — i.e. tax break — offered by the Australian government.
Kong: Skull Island describes the isle as “a place where myth and science meet.”
On film though, it’s a spot where the imaginations of Kong fans run wild.
Set in 1973, the “Kong: Skull Island” is unrelated to the Kongs that came before. There’s no Empire State Building, no Jessica Lange, no romance between damsel and beast.
John Goodman is Bermuda Triangle conspiracy theorist William Randa, a man with some wild ideas about an uncharted island in the South Pacific. “This planet doesn’t belong to us. Ancient species owned this earth long before mankind. I spent 30 years trying to prove the truth: monsters exist.” With government funding supplied by a senator (Richard Jenkins) Randa leads an expedition to prove his ideas about certain life forms on the planet. Along for the ride are a military helicopter squadron, a handful of scientists, U.S. military commander Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), former British soldier turned mercenary James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) and antiwar photographer Mason Weaver (Brie Larson).
Arriving at the island they are greeted by the tallest King Kong ever. “Is that a monkey?” gasps Jack Chapman (Toby Kebbell). Some monkey. At over 100 feet he dwarfs his cinematic brothers—1933’s Kong was 24 feet, the 1976 version was 55 feet while Peter Jackson knocked him back to 25 feet for his 2005 adaptation—and easily knocks many of Randa’s helicopters from the air.
The survivors hit the ground running, only to meet up with Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly), a World War II fighter pilot stranded on the island for decades. “You’ve probably noticed a lot of weird things on this island,” he says in the understatement of the century. As they try and brave the treacherous landscape to meet a refuelling team at the north end of the island the motley crew soon realizes Kong isn’t their only or even biggest problem.
At its furry heart “Kong: Skull Island” feels like an anti-war movie. At least half of it does. The opening section, roughly half the movie, suggests the unintentional and deadly consequences that come from dropping bombs were you shouldn’t. “You didn’t go to someone’s house and start dropping bombs and less you’re looking for a fight.” It’s a timely message about unleashing powers we don’t understand in the name of war wrapped in a Vietnam allegory. “Sometimes the enemy doesn’t exist until you show up at his doorstep,” says Cole (Shea Whigham).
Then Reilly enters and with him comes a new shift. What was once a message movie is now a story of survival and giant beasts. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts pivots at this point, staging a series of action scenes with cool creatures, and it works as pure creature feature entertainment. It’s cool to see Kong tossing military helicopters around as though they were Tonka Toys and another scene will make you think twice about sitting on an old hollowed out log. Fans of bigly beast action will be more than satisfied with the final battle between Kong and a massive subterranean people eater.
“Kong: Skull Island’s” social commentary doesn’t fade away completely but Kong’s mighty roar does drown most of it out. Just below the roar, almost out of earshot, is the idea that displays of force aren’t always the way to deal with conflict, a rare sentiment for an action movie laden with WMDs. Mostly the flick provides a fun romp with some big budget beasts and (secondarily) an Oscar winner or two.
How to describe High-Rise, the darkly funny film from director Ben Wheatley?
Here goes; imagine the love child of Lord of the Flies and The Towering Inferno. An adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel about class segregation in a luxury condo, High-Rise is chaotic and completely bonkers.
“There’s material in here that is difficult and there’s structure in here that’s difficult but there’s also fun,” says Wheatley.
“There’s anarchy and sex and dancing and music. I always like to think about it like those 40s and 50s Hollywood movies and what they used to look like. There’d be no contradiction in a cowboy movie stopping for someone to sing a song.
“You don’t think about the pacing being really odd. The idea behind it was that those films were broken up into chunks. There’s a variety to them that make them really enjoyable. That’s what I was hoping for with this.”
Wheatley says the story of social warfare in the closed environment of an apartment building is just as relevant now as it was when Ballard wrote it in 1975.
“Ballard used to describe it that he was standing by the side of the road waving that there is danger ahead. But when I reread it when I was 40, it’s like, Crap, it’s not a warning anymore. It’s like it was taken from the newspaper. This is actually happening, which is kind of shocking but also kind of interesting.”
Known for his uncompromising films like Kill List and Sightseers, movies that critic Sheila O’Malley described as “black comedy thrillers involving crime, murder” and notable for their “absence of a moral compass,” the 44-year-old director is the cinematic spawn of mavericks like Nicolas Roeg, Ken Russell and John Boorman, British filmmakers who broke taboos in big budget movies like Don’t Look Now, The Devils and Deliverance.
“That was the mainstream,” he says. “When you dig into the BFI archive and look at the Jack Bond stuff and see the other end of the avant guard cinema that was being made at the same time, it was absolutely crazy. It’s a real shame that has been lost. What also makes me chuckle is you see reviews saying that High-Rise is insane or incredibly experimental and you think, ‘This film wouldn’t have stood out as all that strange in the ’70s.’ It would have been a more conservative film of that period.”
Today it’s a little tougher to raise money to get challenging films like High-Rise made. He says Hollywood-y or famous actors help, and to that end he signed Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons and Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss to tell his outlandish tale.
“I like what (producer) Jeremy Thomas says about it. His whole career has been about smuggling weird into the mainstream and I think that’s about right. It’s a deal between you and the audience.”
Part of that audience is Ballard’s considerable fan base.
“The Ballardian website have interviewed us a few times and they seem to be convinced that we haven’t totally pissed up the leg of the memory of J.G. Ballard. There was never any intention to rile those people. They are partly the reason we are able to do the film, they are the fan base. Why would you go out of your way to irritate people like that?”
