SYNOPSIS: “Emilia Pérez,” a new Spanish-language musical crime drama starring Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez and now playing in theatres, is a subversive story about the search for happiness and affirmation of identity. Zoe Saldaña plays a burned-out Mexico City lawyer tired of defending drug related clients. When she is offered the biggest fee of her life by a fearsome cartel leader, who hires her to facilitate his “retirement” (i.e.: disappearance) and transition into an authentic self, she can’t say no. “What do I risk?” she asks. “Becoming rich, “replies the cartel leader.
CAST: Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Mark Ivanir, and Édgar Ramírez. Written and directed by Jacques Audiard.
REVIEW: “Emilia Pérez” mixes-and-matches Broadway style production numbers with telenovela melodrama and pulpy crime drama to create a genre-bending, emotionally authentic story about the possibility of erasing the past to create a new future.
A full-blown musical, with three lead performances—Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Karla Sofía Gascón—characters who burst into song and inventive and enthusiastic choreography, the story may seem overstuffed, but director Jacques Audiard’s pedal-the-the-metal staging ensures the various story threads weave together.
Gascón (the first openly trans actor to win a major prize at the Cannes Film Festival when she shared the Best Actress Award with her “Emilia Pérez” co-stars) provides the film’s heart. As Emilia, she is as benevolent as she was vicious when she was a cartel boss. On her path she not only learns to love herself, but also the people around her, and in return, be worthy of love. The scenes with her kids—particularly a song in which her young son, who thinks his dad is dead, remembers his father—are tender and coloured with a bittersweet quality.
If all the action revolves around the title character, it is Saldaña, in a career best performance, who takes command. She has sung and danced on screen before—in “Vivo” and “Center Stage”—but never with this kind of passion, ferocity and fearlessness. Her character Rita is the audience surrogate, a guide through the increasing labyrinthine story.
She is aided by composers Clément Ducol and Camille Dalmais whose score and show tunes provide the emotional underpinnings of scene after scene, but also forward the story with songs that jump styles as often as the movie cycles through genre.
Gomez is given less to do but delivers the film’s strongest vocals and hands in a fine dramatic performance.
Ultimately, Emilia’s journey to happiness begs the question, Can the sins of the past be remedied by the actions of the present? Audiard, who also wrote the script, clearly has ideas on the subject, but no spoilers here. Suffice to say, the film’s dramatic final third keeps with Audiard’s penchant for envelope pushing.
“Emilia Pérez” is quite simply, unlike any other film that will be released this year. Is it a musical, a cartel story, a musical soap opera or a eulogy to those lost to cartel violence? The truth is it is all those things, banged together in a form that feels fresh and exciting.
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” the new sci fi action comedy from director James Gunn, brings the hip needle drops, off-kilter humor and mismatched, misfit superheroes you expect, but adds in unexpectedly heart tugging sentiments about family, second chances and personal growth.
The action begins on a downbeat note. Rocket (Bradley Cooper), the smart mouthed genetically engineered racoon, is feeling down, wallowing in the maudlin sounds of Radiohead’s “Creep.”
Star-Lord, a.k.a. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is using booze to grapple with the change in his girlfriend Gamora (Zoe Saldaña). She was killed by Thanos, but, courtesy of an alternate timeline, a version of her returned, but different, with no memory of her adventures with the Guardians or her love affair with Quill. “I’ll tell you something,” he says. “I’m Star-Lord. I formed the Guardians. Met a girl, fell in love, and that girl died. But then she came back. Came back a total d**k.”
Their world is given a shake and bake by caped supervillain Adam Warlock (Will Poulter). He is a powerful cosmic entity, with a third eye jewel embedded in his forehead, working with the man responsible for creating Rocket’s unique genetic makeup, a Dr. Moreau type known as the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji). The ultimate plan is to kidnap and study Rocket to use the chatty racoon as the basis to sidestep the evolutionary process and create more hybrid species. “My sacred mission is to create the perfect society,” he says.
During the invasion, Rocket is severely injured, revealing to his co-Guardians—Star-Lord, Nebula (Karen Gillen), Mantis (Pom Klementieff) Drax (Dave Bautista), Groot (the voice of Vin Diesel) and Gamora—the extent of his genetic modifications.
As the racoon wavers between life and death, the film cleaves into two parts, Rocket’s origin story and the rescue mission to save his life. “Are you ready for one last ride?” asks Peter.
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” succumbs to the usual superhero movie pitfalls. By the time the end credits roll, it has become a loud, slightly over-long orgy of CGI, but James Gunn brings something most other superhero movies don’t have.
Within the wham-bam action overload is a genuine sweetness that overrides the bombastic action. Under his watch the movies provide the expected wild ride while grounding the otherworldly action with poignant relationship drama. These movies are about logical, not necessarily biological, families, and that connection, above all else, is what makes these movies so effective.
If Gunn (and Bautista) can make a character named Drax the Destroyer loveable, then anything is possible.
On this edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet Mark Critch. He is an actor, comedian and author, who, since 2003 has starred on the political parody show This Hour Has 22 Minutes. He’s photo-bombed Justin Trudeau, offered Pamela Anderson a million dollars to stop acting, and poked fun at characters like Rex Murphy, Don Cherry and Donald Trump.
The show turns thirty years old this season, making it the longest running comedy show on Canadian television. As if that wasn’t enough to keep Mark busy, his other show, the hit CBC sitcom “Son of a Critch,” is now on its second season. The show is a biographical look at growing up in Newfoundland and Labrador, and in a fun twist, he plays his own father on the show.
Then, we get to know Raymond Knowles, and he is the world’s number one Avatar fan. To prove it, he has tattooed 95% of his body with Avatar related tats, named his Edmonton Alberta based carpentry company Mr. Avatar, and has seen the movies more times than you can count.
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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“Avatar: The Way of Water” harkens back to a time when Hollywood bigshots thought, “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a 3D picture is worth a million words.” The original film, 2009’s “Avatar” was director James Cameron’s grand experiment in the audience’s tolerance for 2 hours 42 minutes of images popping off the screen.
Thirteen years ago, the million words theory worked. “Avatar” was a massive hit, grossing almost 3 billion dollars worldwide, as rumors of a series of sequels hung in the air. Delay after delay kept the blue people off screens for so long, four presidents came and went while Cameron tinkered with the story and the technology to bring his vision to life.
The tinkering is finally over. Cameron returns to theatres with the first of four planned sequels, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” an epic 3D sequel that mixes astonishing visuals with eye-rolling teenagers, a character with the b-movie name Z-Dog and a 3 hour and 12-minute tale of colonialism.
Set on Pandora, an Earth-like habitable extrasolar moon from the Alpha Centauri System populated by the Na’vi, the 9 to 10 feet tall Indigenous peoples, the movie picks up the action more than a decade after the events of the first film. Former Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who left his human body behind to permanently become Na’vi, lives on the peaceful planet with wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and children.
Their idyll is interrupted with the return of the Sky People, humans who want to“pacify the hostiles” and takeover Pandora.
“Earth is dying,” says General Frances Ardmore (Edie Falco). “Pandora is the new frontier.”
Despite having been killed off in the original, the Pandora-bound team is led by the ruthless Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), a genetically engineered “recombinant” or avatar version of the late Marine, implanted with his mind and emotions. “We have been brought back in the form of our enemy,” he says of he and his team. He plans on taking Pandora at any cost, and getting revenge on Sully, who he sees as a traitor.
Forced into hiding with Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), Ronal (Kate Winslet) and the reef people clan of Metkayina, Sully and his family learn the way of water—”no beginning and no end”—and fight to defend their world.
So, the big question is: Was “Avatar: The Way of Water” worth the wait?
As a technical achievement, yes, unquestionably. The visuals are stunning, particularly in the underwater scenes. Cameron’s camera has a nimbleness often missing in 3D films, which often feel locked-down. His fluid camera roams, on land and sea, capturing some of the most eye-popping, breathtaking scenes of this, or any other, season. Each and every frame is carefully considered, and most could be cut out, framed and hung on the wall to great effect.
The visuals facilitate Cameron’s world building, providing tantalizing views of the forest land of Pandora and the wet ‘n wild world of Metkayina, complete with giant whale-like creatures that could have sprung from the imagination of Ray Harryhausen, and lush, colorful flora and fauna.
It does not look like any other 3D film—even the original “Avatar”—and will engage the eye and stimulate the brain.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the story, which is as simple as the images are complex. Essentially, Cameron continues the colonialization themes of the first film, while adding in mysticism, traditional medicine, poachers and even a nod to Jonah and the Whale.
Most of all, it is a story of family, of parents and children. Apparently, Pandorian kids behave sort of like Earth teens, eye rolls, attitude and all. The family relationships add an intimate element to the epic story, but the visuals often get in the way of the storytelling.
Long action sequences, like a spectacular sea creature attack, take away from the movie’s main thrust, pushing the running time upwards, but not advancing the story. Perhaps they are scheduled in to accommodate bathroom breaks. Whatever the reason, they showcase Cameron’s mastery of the form but often feel spectacular simply for the sake of spectacle.
Loud and proud, “Avatar: The Way of Water” can be, by times, overwhelming, but it’s also the kind of grand scale movie that demands to be seen on the biggest, most immersive screen possible. Cameron shoots for the moon, but goes even further, to a place called Pandora.
“Amsterdam,” a quirky new film starring John David Washington, Margot Robbie and Christian Bale and now playing in theatres, is a convoluted story fueled by everything from fascism and birding to murder and music. If there ever was an example of a film that could have benefitted from the KISS rule, Keep It Simple Silly, this is it.
The madcap tale begins in 1933 New York City. WWI vet Dr. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), once a Park Avenue physician, he now runs a downtown clinic where he caters to the needs of soldiers who came back from the war broken and in pain.
When Berendsen and his best friend, fellow vet and lawyer Harold Woodsman (John David Washington), are hired by Liz Meekins (Taylor Swift), the daughter of their beloved commanding officer, to ascertain the cause of his death, they are drawn into a murder mystery involving secret organizations, ultra-rich industrialists and a crusty Marine played by Robert DeNiro.
In a flashback to the final days of WWI, we learn their backstory and meet Valerie (Margot Robbie), a nurse who treats their wounds, physically and mentally. As a trio, they swear allegiance to one another during an extended bohemian get-a-way in Amsterdam, a city that becomes a metaphor for freedom and friendship.
Reviewing “Amsterdam” stings. The production is first rate, from Academy Award nominated director David O. Russell, to the a-list cast to the ambitious script that attempts to link events of the past to today’s headlines. But, and this is what stings, the film is definitely less than the sum of its parts.
From the off-kilter tone, part screwball, part deadly serious, to the glacial pacing, which makes the already long two-hour-and-fifteen-minute running time seem much longer, and the script, which casts too wide a wide net in hope of catching something compelling, “Amsterdam” flails about, lost in its own ambition. This is the kind of story, it’s easy to imagine, the Coen Brothers could make look effortless, but Russell does not stick the landing.
He does, however, forward some lovely ideas about embracing kindness and the full experience of being alive, but even those are muddied by the inclusion of heavy-handed, and not particularly original, warnings about domestic terrorism and authoritarianism. Ideas get lost in a sea of exposition and narration, that not even these interesting actors can bring to life.
There may be an interesting story somewhere within “Amsterdam,” but it is hidden, lost in the movie’s epic ambitions.
My “Avatar” review from December 2009. The film is being re-released into theatres this weekend in advance of the release of the sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which will be in theatres on December 16, 2022.
*****
In the gap between James “King of the World” Cameron’s last theatrical feature, “Titanic,” and his new film, “Avatar” (in theatres this weekend) Clint Eastwood directed 11 movies, Michael Bay made 6 and even Uwe Boll, a director so reviled there is an on–line petition to prevent him from making any more films, has made fifteen in the time it took Cameron to make just one, but it’s quite a movie.
“Avatar,” based on an original idea by Cameron, is set in the 22nd century on a small planet called Pandora. Under the lush terra firma is a valuable mineral much sought after by the Avatar program—a collaboration between industry and military. Since the climate and atmosphere aren’t hospitable to humans a substitute for homosapien invaders is required. That would be living, breathing avatars of the Pandorian natives, controlled by a human “driver” through a high tech link-up that connects the driver’s mind to their Avatar body. The ten feet tall, blue skinned natives, called the Na’vi— although the humans dismissively call them “blue monkeys”—are deeply connected to their planet, sharing a connection with the land and all its creatures that defies human comprehension. Only one man comes close to understanding the Na’vi. He’s Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) a former marine who lost the use of his legs in combat. Brought on board the Avatar program he is initially used as a mole to infiltrate a Na’vi community to glean information that will make the harvesting of minerals easier, but what begins as simply completing his mission and using his legs again through the avatar soon becomes something else. He learns to love not only the Na’vi people, but one Na’vi in particular, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana).
First let’s dispel some myths. You don’t need to take Gravol with you to the movie theatre. 1.) There were rumors on the net that “Avatar’s” mix of hand held camera and 3-D was literally stomach turning. Not true. 2.) It’s not “Dances with Wolves in Space” or “Fergully” with aliens. 3.) Sight unseen people were calling it Cameron’s Folly, a three hour waste of film and money (a reported $300 million). Not true. 4.) “The Na’vi are the new Jar Jar Binks,” bloggers screamed! Also not true.
With “Avatar” Cameron has made a sprawling epic that lives up to the hype. It is something completely new, a movie that is not a sequel, a remake or based on an existing novel; a film that sprung from Cameron’s imagination and exists on its own plane. Brett Ratner, Michael Bay and all other Hollywood hacks, hang your heads in shame.
Cameron starts from scratch creating a whole new world with language, customs, religion and crazy creatures but never forgets that this is an action movie and not an anthological study. To that he adds allusions to the Iraq war, shock and awe policies and the Native American genocide all bundled up in one giant sci fi romance action flick.
It’s not all perfect, the dialogue is frequently 1980’s-action-movie lame, filled with clichés; there are logic lapses and Saldana’s character shifts from Ripley (remember “Alien”?) to damsel in distress in the blink of an eye, but the film’s achievements outweigh any of these misgivings.
Despite what the early word on the movie may have been Cameron—who at this rate won’t make another film until 2221—makes the audience feel compassion for obviously computer enhanced giant blue creatures, keep our interest for almost three hours and presents a dazzling climax that’ll leave you slack jawed.
This week on the Richard Crouse Show we meet Shawn Levy, the Montreal born producer and director, known for Stranger Things, Real Steel, the Night at the Museum franchise and the recent mega hit Free Guy with Ryan Reynolds. He has reteamed with Reynolds for the Netflilx sci fi family drama The Adam Project. He joined from Los Angeles via Zoom to talk about the why the film isn’t simply a sci fi epic and finding a child actor who could keep up with Ryan Reynolds.
Then, Canadian comedian, actor, writer and YouTuber Julie Nolke also stops by to talk about how she amasses one million followers on You Tube and her new role in the hot sitcom Run the Burbs.
Then, multi award winning humanitarian and community activist Akilah Newton joins me today to discuss her latest project, Big Dreamers: The Canadian Black History Activity Book for Kids Volume 2. It is a celebration of the Black Canadians who overcame adversity and went on to achieve greatness while changing the course of history.
To wrap things up, we meet Mark Williams who played the English wizard Arthur Weasley in seven of the hit “Harry Potter” films and can now be seen in the BritBox drama “Father Brown,” one of the UK’s longest running Daytime Drama series.
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 Ethan Hawke, director Brad Bird, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, Eric Roberts, Brian Henson, Jonathan Goldsmith a.k.a. “The most interesting man in the world,” and best selling author Linwood Barclay.
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Richard joins CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to talk about the Ryan Reynolds time travel adventure “The Adam Project,” the Toronto set fantasy “Turning Red” and the contemplative “After Yang.”
Ryan Reynolds has carved out a unique and profitable niche for himself on screen. The current king of the non-IP action comedy, he recently scored big hits with “Red Notice” and “Free Guy,” original movies not based on a comic book or existing videogame premise. This week, add to that list “The Adam Project,” a sci fi adventure flick now streaming on Netflix co-starring Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner.
Adam Reed (Walker Scobell), a precocious thirteen-year-old living with his mother Ellie (Garner), is still stinging from the death of his father a year earlier. “Son, you need to think about your future,” Ellie says, “because it’s coming. Sooner than you think.”
In fact, it may have already arrived.
One day Adam finds a wounded fighter pilot hiding in his family’s garage. Turns out the stranger isn’t a stranger after all. He’s Adam (Reynolds) from the future; the grown-up version with a bullet hole in his side and a mission. “You’re me,” says the awestruck youngster. “That’s classified,” says older Adam, “but yes, I once was.”
The time traveller jumped back to 2022 to save the world, using information created by his late scientist father Louis (Ruffalo). To do complete the mission, he’ll need to jump back in time further, this time with young Adam at his side. First though, there is a time travelling villain (Catherine Keener) and the question of how to come to grips with the past while saving the future.
Time travel movies rarely ever make perfect sense, and “The Adam Project” is no different. Time may be a flat circle, and destined to repeat itself, but the cinematic machinations of jumping from year to year, of changing the past from the future, often make my head hurt and take me out of the story.
“The Adam Project” sneaks by, not because of its grasp of the paradox of theoretical physics, but because if the chemistry between Reynolds and his young co-star Scobell.
Reynolds, reunites with his “Free Guy” director Shawn Levy, brings his trademarked charisma and way with a joke, while Scobell, making his acting debut, is a natural foil. He is funny, charming and holds his own against Reynolds, arguably one of the best scene stealers in movies today.
They click and because they do, the movie works. The sci fi aspects of the story, the Stormtrooper-looking soldiers from the future or the noisy CGI climax, don’t make as much of an impression as the film’s heart and soul, the relations ship between the Adams and their father as they heal the wounds caused by their dad’s death.
“The Adam Project” threatens to allow the special effect fireworks to overshadow its story, but contains just enough heartwarming material to earn comparisons to the 1980s Amblin movies that were clearly an inspiration.
SYNOPSIS: “Emilia Pérez,” a new Spanish-language musical crime drama starring Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez and now playing in theatres, is a subversive story about the search for happiness and affirmation of identity. Zoe Saldaña plays a burned-out Mexico City lawyer tired of defending drug related clients. When she is offered the biggest fee of her life by a fearsome cartel leader, who hires her to facilitate his “retirement” (i.e.: disappearance) and transition into an authentic self, she can’t say no. “What do I risk?” she asks. “Becoming rich, “replies the cartel leader.
