A weekly feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at Andrew Garfield’s romantic medical drama “Breathe,” the ice cold crime drama “The Snowman” and the controversial “Una.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies including the Nordic Noir “The Snowman,” the romantic medical drama “Breathe” and the controversial “Una.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at Andrew Garfield’s romantic medical drama “Breathe,” the ice cold crime drama “The Snowman” and the controversial “Una.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
There was a time when serial killers ruled the movie theatres.
Movies like Kiss the Girls, Se7en and Silence of the Lambs were big hits and law enforcement types like Alex Cross and Clarice Starling were big draws. Now those stories have moved to the small screen and television shows like CSI and Criminal Minds track down the kinds of killers their big screen counterparts used to stalk.
This weekend serial killers return to the movies in the form of The Snowman, a Michael Fassbender film based on a novel by Jo Nesbø.
Fassbender plays Harry Hole, leader of an elite special victims unit charged with investigating a grisly murder on the first snow of winter. He believes it is the work of serial killer known as The Snowman.
Teaming with Katrine Bratt (Mission: Impossible’s Rebecca Ferguson) he is determined to catch the killer before the next snowfall.
Scott Bonn, criminology professor at Drew University, says audiences are drawn to serial killer movies in much the same way they are attracted to car accidents.
“The actions of a serial killer may be horrible to behold,” he wrote in the book Why We Love Serial Killers, “but much of the public simply cannot look away due to the spectacle.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines a serial killing as “a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone.”
Hollywood defines them by the box office they draw, and has never been shy about portraying serial killers or the police who track them down.
One of the first movies to take advantage of the fascination with serial killers was 1931’s M. Moon-faced actor Peter Lorre plays Hans Beckert, a serial killer who lures children with candy and companionship. “I can’t help myself,” he moans. “I haven’t any control over the evil that’s inside me! The fire! The voices! The torment!”
For a serial killer movie, M is remarkably free of graphic violence or bloodshed. That doesn’t mean it’s not harrowing. A scene in which the gnome-like Beckert lures a young girl with a balloon is spare — there’s virtually no dialogue — but it packs an emotional punch.
Just as important as the killer in the movies are the cops who bring the baddies to justice. In The Calling, Susan Sarandon creates a memorable serial killer hunter. She’s pill-popping Det. Hazel Micallef, a world-weary small town Canadian cop just a drunken whisper away from unemployment. The sleepy little town of Fort Dundas doesn’t offer up much in the way of major cases until a string of grisly murders — slit throats and organ removals — forces Micallef to dust off her detecting skills and track down a killer driven by fanatical religious fervour.
First time director Jason Stone ratchets the bleak atmosphere up to Creep Factor Five in this eerie character-driven mystery. There’s a little bit of Fargo in the mix, with some dark humor — “I just found the guy’s stomach!” — and disquieting imagery, but the real draw is watching the characters navigate through the film’s unsettled but strangely familiar world.
Bonn says movies like Psycho and Summer of Sam allow people to play armchair detective. “We may feel a bit guilty about indulging in them,” he writes, “(but) we simply cannot stop.”
Adapted from the best-selling book of the same name by Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø “The Snowman” is a Scandinavian whodunit with a frosty storyline.
Someone is killing women in Oslo, leaving behind their dismembered bodies and creepy looking snowmen with grimaces made of coffee beans at the crime scenes. All the victims are mothers seemingly “punished” by the snowy sicko for extra martial affairs and terminated pregnancies. To add a macabre purity metaphor to the proceedings, each of their deaths happens during a new snowfall.
Into this grim situation comes alliteratively named detective Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender). “I need a case,” he wheezes at his boss. “I apologize for Oslo’s low-murder rate,” comes the reply.
When Hole is not drinking, chain-smoking or finding new ways to alienate the other members of the Oslo Crime Squad he’s reserving whatever humanity is tucked away inside for his ex Rakel (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her teenage son.
Teamed with newbie Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson) he plods through a sea of red herrings to uncover the identity of Norway’s icy serial killer. “We studied your cases at the Academy,” she says. “You’re up there with the legends.”
We’ve seen this Nordic Noir before and better.
“The Snowman” ticks off all the cop movie clichés. There’s a detective bedevilled by seeing too much death, a protagonist with a personal stake in the case, a serial murderer with a deeply rooted reason for killing and senior cops too quick to try and close cases.
Fassbender’s Hole is a caricature, a once brilliant detective reduced to a bleary-eyed, brooding drunk. His scenes with Ferguson are underplayed to the point of flat lining the drama. Not that there is much drama.
Director Tomas Alfredson—whose films “Let the Right One In” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” are both four star movies—manages moments of tension but doesn’t sustain them. He continuously breaks up the tension with flashbacks and dour staring contests between the serious faced actors.
Add to that a curious lack of Oslo accents—the real mystery here is why these Norwegians speak as though they just graduated RADA—Val Kilmer in a Razzie worthy performance and you’re left with a movie that left me as cold as the snowman‘s grin.
There’s lots of bang—or should that be bang bang—for your buck in the new DVD release of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the neo-noir starring Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer.
Writer director Shane Black was a 1980s wunderkind who penned the script to Lethal Weapon when he was just 22 years old. He continued to script big action movies into the 90s before dropping out of the business, no doubt filled with self-loathing for having written Last Action Hero and The Long Kiss Goodnight. The time away appears to have been a good idea as his script for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang contains all the trademarks that elevated his best work—sharp, funny dialogue, well drawn characters and crazy Pulp Fictionesque violence—with none of the bad—turgid pacing and stupid plots.
As a two-bit east coast burglar who finds himself in the middle of Hollywood life-and-death intrigue Robert Downey Jr is at his madcap best, while Val Kilmer as a private eye named Gay Parry whose cell phone ring tone is I Will Survive, is dangerous and funny. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has a plot hat may leave you scratching your head, but the black humor and the cool lead performances more than compensate.
Any movie that borrows its title from a book of film essays by legendary movie critic Pauline Kael better be good, and this one is.
In Rock of Ages Tom Cruise plays superstar Stacee Jaxx. He’s Ozzy Osbourne with Axl Rose’s attitude and Prince’s trademarked revealing chaps, a spicy stew of rebellion, decadence and Jack Daniels.
The first time we see Jaxx in the film he’s on a round bed, buried under several scantily clad women. It’s a memorable first look at the character, but it’s not exactly an original one.
Director Adam Shankman admits that the idea came from a similar scene — featuring KISS singer Paul Stanley — in the heavy metal documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years.
It’s not the first time a music movie has taken its cue from real rock life.
For a year before shooting playing Jim Morrison in The Doors Val Kilmer immersed himself in the singer’s life, wearing his clothes and spending time at the Lizard King’s favorite Sunset Strip bars.
Despite the film’s many factual errors — drummer John Densmore claims “A third of it is fiction” — the recording studio scene where Jim smashes a TV is true, and even Jim’s disgruntled ex-band mates said they couldn’t distinguish Kilmer’s voice from the real Morrison’s.
The Doors weren’t the only musicians fooled by an actor.
Joan Jett was annoyed that Kristen Stewart wore leather pants when playing her in The Runaways — it would have been more authentic if she had worn jeans she said — but she was impressed with Stewart’s voice. When she first heard a recording of the actress belting out one of her songs she thought it was actually a tape of her old band.
Sex Pistols’ singer Johnny Rotten dismissed Sid and Nancy — the story of Sid Vicious’s life and death — as “mere fantasy” but Gary Oldham bought at least one authentic bit of Sid to the film by wearing the bass player’s real chain necklace in several scenes. Sid’s mom gave the actor the necklace to wear during filming.
Just as Shankman and Cruise borrowed from The Decline of Western Civilization, the Bob Dylan doc Don’t Look Back has inspired scenes in movies such as Bob Roberts and I’m Not There.
The mockumentary Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story parodies the movie in a press conference scene when a reporter compares Dewey to Dylan. “Why doesn’t anyone ask Bob Dylan why he sounds so much like Dewey Cox?” Dewey replies, echoing Dylan’s response to a reporter who likened Dylan to singer-songwriter Donovan.
By the time Nicolas Cage screeches, “Shoot him again! His soul is still dancing!” near the end of “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” his master class of extreme acting reaches its apex. This is the performance that Cage has been slowly working toward; a koo koo bananas performance that makes his demented work in “Knowing” look restrained. But you know what? It works.
Set in post Katrina New Orleans, Cage is Terence McDonagh a good, but wild cop who injures his back saving a drowning prisoner in a flooded jail. Soon he becomes addicted to pain killers, then coke, then anything that will ease his aching back. When he can no longer easily get drugs from the evidence room at work for him and his prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes) he goes off the deep end, falling into an abyss of sex, drugs and gambling. Throughout it all he works to solve the case of a family of murdered Senagalese immigrants. “Just because he likes to get high,” says Stevie Pruit (Val Kilmer), “doesn’t stop him being the po-lice.”
“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” doesn’t have the same operatic madness as Brian DePalma’s “Scarface,” it’s too down and dirty for that, but it does have an unhinged quality that makes it the most surprising film of the year. The police procedural portion of the story is fairly straightforward, but Cage’s acting—which is as big as the 44 Magnum he has permanently wedged in his belt—and director Werner Herzog’s surreal touches, like a hallucination scene complete with close-ups of iguanas, a Tom Jones soundtrack and a bug eyed Cage, make it a memorable experience.
Finding the tone of the film may be the most challenging part of finding enjoyment here. It’s gritty and silly, but unlike the film it is very loosely based on, Abel Ferarra’s cult classic “Bad Lieutenant,” it doesn’t take itself very seriously. That’s not apparent at first, but when Cage physically abuses an elderly woman, shrieking, “I’m trying to be courteous but I’m beginning to think that’s getting in the way of me being effective,” while coked out of his mind, it becomes obvious that this is a satire of bad cop movies like “Narc” or “Training Day.”
Seen as parody, the film’s richness and don’t-give-a-damn energy—even if the plot points don’t always add up—make it one of the more unusual and entertaining movies of the year.
