Archive for February, 2016

EDDIE THE EAGLE: 2 STARS. “aspires to be a feel GREAT movie.”

Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 4.59.05 PM“Eddie the Eagle” is not a feel-good movie. Like Eddie, the English skier whose ambitions to compete in the Olympics made him a star, the film sets its sights high. It’s not content to simply be a feel good film, it’s aspiring to be a feel GREAT movie.

When we first meet Eddie it’s 1973 and he’s a cute English kid with leg braces and a dream of entering the Olympics. Unfortunately his bad knees prevent him from taking part in most of the tradition sports so he wants to use his skill at holding his breath to win the gold.

Cut to his teen years. The braces are gone and he home trains himself in pole-vault and (not-so) long jumps in hopes of taking a shot at the Summer Olympics. His father (Tim McInnerny) isn’t as hopeful. “You’ll never be Olympic material,” he says. Bloodied but unbowed, the now twenty-two year old Eddie (Taron Egerton) switches his focus to winter sports, specifically ski jumping. With no facilities available in England he heads to Germany to train. Trouble is, while he has spirit, he has no trainer or knowledge of the sport. “How do you land?’ he wonders after one disastrous jump.

After a rough start—cue the wipe out montage—he meets Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman), once an Olympic champion, now a drunk who maintains the jumps. Peary doesn’t think Eddie has a shot, but the young man’s enthusiasm wears him down and soon he is training Eddie for the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary. Ski jumping, he says, “is not just a sport, it’s an art. It’s spiritual.”

What Eddie lacks in technical skill he makes up for in determination. Because the Olympic rules hadn’t changed in 52 years since the last British ski jumper competed in the games, all Eddie has to do, basically, is show up and he’ll be guaranteed a spot in Calgary. First, however, he has to learn to jump without breaking every bone in his body.

Like Kendall Jenner or a YouTube cat video “Eddie the Eagle” is unashamed to flaunt its cuteness to appeal to viewers. Egerton, best known for his swaggerific role in “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” hands in a performance that makes Benny Hill look nuanced. With thick, ill-fitting glasses, he’s all doe eyes and determination, a stiff-upper-lipper who wants to be part of the Olympics to prove everyone who told him he wasn’t good enough wrong. It’s an underdog story of such epic proportions it makes “The Bad News Bears” and all other underdogs look jaded by comparison.

The movie’s tagline is, “Two underdogs, one dream,” so be assured, it doubles down on the long shot vibe. Jackman’s Peary is a man who once had it all, lost it and knows what it is like to be written off by everyone. He and Eddie are two peas in a pod and their dual ‘doing your best is the greatest reward’ message is the movie’s lesson. Nothing more, nothing less.

“Eddie the Eagle” is not an ambitious movie. It sets out to do one thing—make Eddie an underdog for the ages—but I couldn’t help but think of the words of the founder of the International Olympic Committee, Pierre de Coubertin. “It’s not the triumph,” he said, “it’s the struggle.” The film may triumph in that its modest goals are achieved but the struggle to tell a truly interesting story devoid of manipulation was too much for director Dexter Fletcher. “Eddie The Eagle” lands with a bit of a thud.

WHERE TO INVADE NEXT: 2 ½ STARS. “picking flowers, not weeds.”

Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 4.58.08 PMIt’s been quiet on the Michael Moore front of late. The Oscar winning documentary filmmaker has been keeping a low profile but keeping busy making a movie he describes as “epic.” Shot quietly in several continents “Where to Invade Next” is his look at how and why the United States keeps the military industrial complex alive. It’s a documentary but it plays like a follow-up to his lone narrative film, “Canadian Bacon.”

The concept of “Where to Invade Next” is pretty simple. Moore “invades” Italy, France, Finland, Germany, Tunisia and Norway to basically illustrate how much better the citizens of those countries have it compared to his fellow Americans. He learns Italians get a month paid leave, a “thirteenth month” set aside for enjoyment. Also, France has great food and an unsurprisingly open attitude about sex education, Finland has the best food and Norway’s legalization of drugs and saw a drop in addiction.

The tone of “Where to Invade Next” is a little different. No, he hasn’t suddenly joined the Republican party. This time out he says he’ll be “picking flowers, not weeds.” In other words, he’s looking at the bright side for once.

The material is presented with Moore’s usual amiable everyman persona. His fans will expect his brand of awe-shucks amazement, but for the first time in one of his documentaries it feels like a performance. It seems as though the movie, while entertaining, had its thesis firmly in place before the individual invasions. Moore’s idea is to illustrate how progressive ideas can lead to happier populaces and it appears he has tailored the material to fit his premise. It is a message perfectly tailored for Moore’s audience—he’s preaching to the choir on this one—but it appears to be more a treatise than a documentary. As treatises go it’s an entertaining one but the information feels too cherry picked to have the impact I’m sure Moore intended.

CTVNEWS.CA: Will this be Leonardo DiCaprio’s year to finally win an Oscar?

Screen Shot 2016-02-24 at 9.57.02 AMIf the 41-year-old actor wins on Feb. 28, it will be well-deserved, says Canada AM film critic Richard Crouse.

“All the other times (he was nominated) were for worthy roles, but he narrowly missed each time,” Crouse told CTVNews.ca.

DiCaprio has been up for the best actor Oscar for his roles in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” “The Aviator,” “Blood Diamond,” and “The Wolf on Wall Street.”

But things appear to be lining up for DiCaprio this year, Crouse says, as his role in “The Revenant” is typical of the kinds of roles that the Academy tends to favour…

Read the whole article by Marlene Leung at ctvnews.ca!

THE DRAKE HOTEL OSCAR PARTY 2016: ROCK THAT RED CARPET SWAG

Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 4.55.58 PMOSCAR PARTY 2016: ROCK THAT RED CARPET SWAG

This Sunday, put on your best threads + have your red carpet moment at The Drake Hotel.
Cinema King Richard Crouse returns as host of our annual Oscars Viewing Party and this time Google Canada is in on the fun. Peek into the world of Oscars fashion, nominees + moments that are capturing Canada’s attention in real-time, courtesy of our friends at Google. As Canada’s most-searched awards show, it just might surprise you to learn what types of questions have Canadians buzzing.

Cast your votes in our Oscar pool + flex your web-searching prowess in a challenging match of Google’s cinematic trivia! Prizes to be won (like a NEXUS 6P PHONE IN OSCAR GOLD!), bubbly to be toasted, a $37 prix-fixe to enjoy + of course the sweet debates of who wore it best.

RESERVE YOUR SPOT HERE!

Richard talks Oscars with Roger and Marilyn on CHUM FM!

Screen Shot 2015-10-21 at 3.03.37 PMRichard sits in on Toronto’s number one radio show, Roger and Marilyn, on CHUM FM to predict the winners of the top line Oscars. Will it be Leo or Matt? The Big Short or The Revenant? Listen in and win your Oscar pool! (Starts at 9:07)

 

 

 

 

 

RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY FEBRUARY 19, 2016.

Screen Shot 2016-02-19 at 3.09.21 PMRichard sits in with CP24 anchor Stephanie Smythe to review the Jesse Owens’s biopic “Race,” the religious terror of “The Witch” and the religious fervor of “Risen.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

 

RICHARD’S “CANADA AM” REVIEWS FOR FEBRUARY 19 WITH JEFF HUTCHESON.

Screen Shot 2016-02-19 at 11.36.01 AMRichard and “Canada AM” host Jeff Hutcheson have a look at the weekend’s big releases, the Jesse Owens’s biopic “Race” and the puritanical terror of “The Witch” and the pious secularity of “Risen.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

Metro: Touched With Fire tours director’s struggle with bipolar disorder

Screen Shot 2016-02-17 at 5.29.03 PMBy Richard Crouse – Metro Canada

Touched with Fire stars Katie Holmes and Luke Kirby as two poets with bipolar disorder. It’s the work of Paul Dalio who wrote the screenplay, directed, edited and even wrote the musical score.

“The film was kind of a metaphor for my story,” he says. “It was my struggle to come to terms with all this beauty that I found in this thing and all this horror I found in this thing. And how you reconcile that. It took the form of these two lovers who each represented a different aspect of it. As these two lovers pursue their love, it goes back and forth between agony and ecstasy. They have to come to terms with it.”

The idea for the screenplay came from a conversation with his wife Kristina Nikolova, a filmmaker he met while studying film at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. The pair were in Bulgaria nearing the end of production on her movie Faith, Love and Whiskey.

She asked him to write a story for her to direct and as she remembers he said, “How about two crazy people meeting in a psychiatric hospital and they have to basically choose between sanity and love?” She said, “Wow, that’s a great idea, but it’s your story,” and the seed for Touched with Fire was planted.

Dalio’s issues with mental health began when he was in his undergrad years for Dramatic Writing at New York University.

He describes breaking into a “hypomanic state when I was experimenting with marijuana,” which he used as a “creative catalyst.”

“I didn’t know at the time (that) if you have the bipolar gene and you smoke marijuana it actually pushes your mind into a hypomanic state,” he says.

“It makes you temporarily more creative with a quicker mind. At first it was thrilling. It got to the point where my fingers couldn’t keep up with my mind. I had to use a voice recorder. Then my thoughts started overlapping and my mind couldn’t keep up with my thoughts. I would go for runs with the voice recorder to try and speed my mind up to keep up with these overlapping thoughts.

“For a while my professors started to really praise my work, saying it was brilliant, which they never had before. I felt like I was tapping into some kind of divine illumination. I started to think I was experiencing God. Visions from God.”

Soon the creativity that once seemed like a gift “took the form of a demon that was inside of me. Possessing me, laughing at me and my mistakes.”

Dalio spent four years gripped by suicidal thoughts and manic behaviour until realizing, “I couldn’t put my family through that anymore so I had to resign myself to living numb on medication and just getting by.”

A meeting with author Kay Redfield Jamison, whose book Exuberance: The Passion for Life, explores the mind’s pathologies convinced him that he could live and work creatively on his medication.

“She said she experiences exhuberance all the time and I absolutely will if I am patient. She also said she doesn’t know one artist who isn’t more creative after bipolar than before bipolar, as long as they are on the meds.

“It changed everything, It gave me hope. I had something to fight for then.”

Metro: Race: Toronto’s Stephan James ‘blown away’ by Jesse Owen story

Screen Shot 2016-02-15 at 1.47.12 PMBy Richard Crouse – Metro Canada

In the film Race, Toronto-born actor Stephan James plays the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history. But, when he was approached about the part, James wasn’t sure exactly who Jesse Owens was.

“When I got that call that they’re making a Jesse Owens biopic I scratched my head a little,” the 22-year-old says.

“He won those gold medals, right? How many did he win again? I didn’t know how many he won or where he won them or under what circumstances or when this all took place.”

He quickly learned about Owens’s early career, the Ohio State races that made him a legend and how an African American runner stared down Hitler by winning four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

“After reading the script and researching his life to find out the backstory I was literally blown away. Blown away that this had taken place almost 80 years ago.”

The film documents 28 turbulent months in Owens’s life, from just before he enrolled in university to the Olympics where, ESPN would later say, the runner “single-handedly crush[ed] Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy.”

Jason Sudeikis, who plays Owens’s college trainer Larry Snyder, says he wanted to make the movie because “it didn’t lean on any one thing. It was bigger than just a sports film. It wasn’t pontificating, we didn’t treat Jesse with kid gloves and only as an icon. We can’t have all our heroes with giant hammers and capes. While that is good at the box office and for people with stock options I don’t know how good it is for little boys and girls who think that is the only way they can become a hero. We got to show the humanity behind him, we see him warts and all. You see his petulance, you get to see his indecision, you see him make horrible missteps as a husband and father, and yet all through that adversity he has the humility and integrity to correct those mistakes. That is just as heroic as whipping Hitler’s buns for four gold medals.”

James, who was recently seen as civil rights leader John Lewis in the critically acclaimed Selma, felt the weight of playing a legend on screen.

“It is one thing to be leading your own film,” he says. “To be number one on that call sheet, to know you have the biggest workload, to know that there are millions of dollars and ideas on your head. It’s another thing to play Jesse

Owens, the icon, the man, the myth, the legend. A guy who is not only a pivotal person in American history but world history, so I knew I had my work cut for me. The pressure was there. Obviously he’s not alive but his family is and have been very much involved since the beginning. There is a certain responsibility to play a real character, of course, but the great Jesse Owens is a whole other thing.”

After starring as Owens in Race, James has his sights set on playing another kind of hero. “I want to play Spider-Man,” he says. “I think that would be dope. I’ve always wanted to play a superhero but Spider-Man is so cool, so unassuming. I think I can relate a little.”