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.
Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Marcia MacMillan have a look at the weekend’s big releases including “The Secret Life of Pets 2,” “X-Men: Dark Phoenix,” the indie drama “Mouthpiece” and the rockumentary “Echo in the Canyon.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
A weekly feature from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at “The Secret Life of Pets 2,” “X-Men: Dark Phoenix” and the indie drama “Mouthpiece.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard joins CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including “The Secret Life of Pets 2” and “X-Men: Dark Phoenix.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including the housebroken sequel “The Secret Life of Pets 2,” the cosmic bonfire of CGI flames “X-Men: Dark Phoenix” and the nostalgic 60s doc “Echoes in the Canyon” with CFRA Morning Rush host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
The X-Men have a rich and textured history but almost none is more complicated than Jean Grey, the mutant played by “Game of Thrones” star Sophie Turner in this weekend’s “Dark Phoenix.”
A human with the superpower of telepathy, she’s an empath and, for good and for evil, is also the physical manifestation of the cosmic Phoenix Force, “the spark that gave life to the Universe, the flame that will ultimately consume it.” Over the years she has been included on Top 100 Comic Book Heroes and Comic Book Villains lists and been killed off several times.
The action in “Dark Phoenix” begins with the X-Men team heralded as heroes by the public who once feared them. Professor X (James McAvoy) is a celebrity, featured on magazines, getting medals from the president. He sees their do-good work as a way to keep them safe. “It’s a means to an,” he says, “We are just one bad day away from them starting to see us as the enemy again.”
When a group of astronauts find themselves in trouble Prof X sends Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Grey and others to space on a daring rescue mission. During the operation Grey is hit by “pure and unimaginably powerful cosmic waves” that will eventually transmute her into the Dark Phoenix, a malevolent force with the potential to tear the world apart. The core of good inside Grey battles for supremacy until repressed pain and anger push her to the dark side. “You’re special, Jean,” says shapeshifting energy sponge Smith (Jessica Chastain), “and if you stop fighting that force inside you, if you embrace it, you will possess the very power of a god.”
The X-Men crew have been always been concerned with the greater good, doing what is best for the masses, but what happens when one of their own turns bad and needs to be stopped? That’s the question at the heart of “Dark Phoenix.” “When I lose control,” Grey says, “bad things happen to the people I love.”
At their best the “X-Men” movies are an ode to outsiders. Ripe with metaphor and nuance, they look at how society treats marginalized people. They also find the humanity in their outsider characters. Whether they have blue fur or can bend metal with their mind, their greatest superpowers are always qualities like forgiveness and loyalty.
Progressive ideas about acceptance are still at the heart of “Dark Phoenix” but all the nuance is consumed in a cosmic bonfire of CGI flames and the messaging is delivered with a mallet. “They can never understand you! What they can’t understand they fear and what they fear they seek to destroy!”
The film’s biggest (and only intentional laugh) comes with a good and timely line courtesy of Jennifer Lawrence. “The women are always saving the men around here,” says a huffy Mystique to Professor X. “You might want to think about changing the name to X-Women.”
Despite the pyro on display “Dark Phoenix” doesn’t catch fire. The tone is flat, passionless even as a hectic CGI-A-Thon of eye blistering action eats up much of the last reel. (MILD SPOILER AHEAD) Long-time fans may get a lump in their throats as one classic character makes their farewell but as Grey says, “emotions don’t make you weak, they make you strong.” Whether you’ll feel stronger or not after the end credits roll will depend on how much attached you are to the X-Men characters. If you’re not already a fan this lackluster movie is unlikely to convert you.
