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 the latest Marvel superhero flick “Captain Marvel,” Ben Affleck in “Triple Frontier” and a documentary about one of the most popular books of all time, “Invisible Essence: The Little Prince.”
Watch to the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the twenty-first Marvel superhero flick “Captain Marvel,” Ben Affleck in “Triple Frontier” and a documentary about one of the most popular books of all time, “Invisible Essence: The Little Prince.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“Triple Frontier,” a new thriller starring Oscar Isaac and Ben Affleck, is a ‘let’s get the band back together for one last gig” movie given extra heft by its examination of the treatment of veterans.
Santiago Garcia (Isaac) has his sights set on reclusive South American drug lord Gabriel Lorea (Reynaldo Gallegos). After a failed attempt to infiltrate Lorea’s circle he turns to his former comrades, a group of American Special Forces operatives, now retired. Dangling a huge pay cheque—$17,000 a week and 25% of the $75 million in cash they seize—he lures MMA fighter Ironhead Miller (Charlie Hunnam), Ironhead’s brother and gunslinger Ben (Garrett Hedlund), pilot ‘Catfish’ Morales (Pedro Pascal) and logistics genius turned failed real estate salesman Tom Davies (Affleck).
Each were hotshot Special Forces who have floundered in civilian life. “You’ve been shot five times for your country and you can barely afford to live,” Garcia says to Davies. “That’s the crime.” Once recruited they become a gritty A-Team, who, with the help of an informant (Adria Arjona), plan on raiding Lorea’s heavily fortified house—“The house is the safe.“—killing the drug lord and pocketing millions in cash. “We finally get to use our skills for our own benefit and actually change something,” says Garcia.
The carefully planned mission, however, turns into, some “full on cowboy s**t” when some of their intel proves incorrect. Hundreds of bullets later they make a hasty retreat with only their guns, their wits and hundreds of millions of dollars in duffle bags. Question is, will they complete the mission or will greed het the best of them?
“Triple Frontier” is half heist, half get-away, each section filled with equal parts tension and clichés. Director J.C. Chandor knows how to let anxiety hang in the air, creating a sense of danger that permeates the heist section. The get-a-way is more contemplative, or at least as contemplative as a movie with this kind of body count can offer. A heavy mist of testosterone hangs over both sections making this tale of men, their guns and world weariness feel like something we’ve seen before. Clichéd dialogue—“We’re dancing with the devil here!”—comes hard and fast and by the time the soundtrack blares “Masters of War” it feels as though Chandor is hitting the viewer with a metaphorical billy cub to get his message across.
Once the testosterone settles Chandor’s message of how veterans are treated once they slip out of their uniforms becomes crystal clear. As each of these war scarred men question the way the choices they’ve made with their lives, they also realize it’s the only way they know. They’ve been conditioned to behave a certain way and yet, when they retire they are left without the resources, personally or professionally, to deal with civilian life. It’s a timely and heartfelt message deftly delivered.
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 Muppets Gone Wild in “The Happytime Murders,” the escape-happy convicts of “Papillon,” and the happy-go-lucky surfers dudes of “Breath.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard joins CP24 anchor Nathan Downer to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including the dirty-mouthed puppet movie “The Happytime Murders,” the prison drama “Papillon,” the rom com “Little Italy” and the gritty crime drama “Crown and Anchor.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s big releases, the raunchy puppet movie “The Happytime Murders,” the prison drama “Papillon” and the gritty crime drama “Crown and Anchor.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the raunchy puppet movie “The Happytime Murders,” the time-travelling rom com “Little Italy,” the “Papillon” reboot and the gritty crime drama “Crown and Anchor” with the CFRA Morning Rush host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
The remounted “Papillon,” starring Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek in the roles made famous by Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffmann in the original, maintains the brutality of the 1973 film but plays more like a buddy flick than the resilience-of-the-human-spirit epic it should have been.
Based on the “75 percent true” tale of Henri Charrière, a safecracker nicknamed Papillon, the 1930’s era story sees him sent to a hellhole jungle penal colony in French Guyana for a crime he didn’t commit. Sentenced to life in prison with hard labour on Devil’s Island, he begins to plot his escape as soon as he arrives, despite the fact that no one has ever successfully fled the island. To assist and finance his plan he offers protection to Louis Dega (Malek), a spindly, wealthy, white-collar criminal with a relative fortune hidden in a place where the sun don’t shine. Faced with abominable conditions and dictatorial prison guards the pair, along with a couple of others, stages a daring run at freedom.
Leaner and meaner than the original the reboot nonetheless hews fairly closely to the 1973 screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and Dalton Trumbo. Some grisly scenes featuring crocodiles and lepers have been blue-pencilled but the basic idea of the bond between the two men in the face of unimaginable adversity remains. Hunnam and Malek make a good team—with Malek even giving the Degas character more inner life than Hoffmann managed—but the movie itself doesn’t contain the same sense of struggle. Certainly there is violence, Hunnam is frequently covered in blood, mud or worse, but the previous film was grittier, less refined. Dialogue was sparse—in the new one Hunnam and Malek chatter like school kids throughout—and there was a sense of hopelessness that fuelled the need for escape. Here their mission feels pat, like a typical prison drama. It’s less meaningful, simply a run from the violence and horrors of their incarceration, and not a spiritual journey.
“Papillon” gets much right and features nice performances from the leads but feels like an unnecessary revamping of the story.
‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’ is now in theatres. Richard sat down with Charlie Hunnam and Guy Ritchie to talk about the new film.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Read about the interview here:
Guy Ritchie’s films have entertained me for years but I’m afraid he didn’t find me very interesting.
The incident happened during my press day with Ritchie and Charlie Hunnam, the director and star of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. I first spoke with them for television. Hunnam answered my opening question about the film Excalibur, a precursor to their movie, enthusiastically. But I could feel Ritchie disengage. He sat back and went into autopilot, answering my questions by rote. The rest of the interview flew by in a flurry of quips and tossed off answers… READ THE WHOLE THING HERE!
