Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to tie a shoelace! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the MCU adventure “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the hardboiled “Marlowe” and the documentary “Cat Daddies.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join NewsTalk 1010 host Jim Richards on the coast-to-coast-to-coast late night “NewsTalk Tonight” to play the game “Did Richard Crouse Like This?” This week we talk about the MCU adventure “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the hardboiled “Marlowe” and the documentary “Cat Daddies.”
Listen to he whole thing HERE!
I joined CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres. Today we talk about the MCU adventure “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the hardboiled “Marlowe,” the “What’s-in-a-name” documentary “The Other Fellow” and the documentary “Cat Daddies.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Tim Denis to have a look at the MCU adventure “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the hardboiled “Marlowe,” the “What’s-in-a-name” documentary “The Other Fellow” and the documentary “Cat Daddies.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the MCU adventure “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the hardboiled “Marlowe,” the “What’s-in-a-name” documentary “The Other Fellow” and the documentary “Cat Daddies.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“I intend to ask questions,” says detective Philip Marlowe (Liam Neeson) in the new gumshoe thriller “Marlowe,” now playing in theatres. And ask questions he does. This revisiting of the classic hardboiled 1930s P.I. Philip Marlowe, made famous on the big screen by Humphrey Bogart, isn’t so much a story as it is a very long series of questions strung together to tell the tale. Screenwriter William Monahan, adapting “The Black-Eyed Blonde,” a 2014 authorized Marlowe novel by Irish writer John Banville, must have burned out the “?” key on his typewriter.
Set in Hollywood, in 1939, the same year Raymond Chandler published “The Big Sleep,” his first Marlowe novel, the movie begins when Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger) hires the detective to find her missing lover, Nico Petersen (François Arnaud). A prop master at one of the studios, he makes extra cash smuggling drugs into the United States in the props he imports from Mexico.
The police say Nico was killed in a hit and run outside a fancy private club, Cavendish thinks he is still alive and Marlowe has questions. Lots of questions.
When “Marlowe” isn’t in Q&A mode, it has, if nothing else, a collection of interesting characters. Jessica Lange makes an impression as a secretive former movie star who just might be her daughter’s love rival, Danny Houston redefines creepy bluster as a pimp at the upmarket Corbata Club but it is Alan Cumming who leaves a lasting impression. He is businessman, philanthropist and gangster Lou Hendricks, a chewer of scenery who delivers lines like, “I am entirely composed of tarantulas,” with the gusto of a Marvel villain.
Neeson gives the title character a world weariness that borders on ennui. In the Raymond Chandler books he is portrayed in his 30s and 40s. Neeson is 70 and, as Marlowe, is still able to take on a room full of bad guys with his fists and his wits, but he’s seen too much of the underside of life, and it has left him cynical, disengaged to the evil that men do. “I’m getting too old for this,” he says after dispatching a group of baddies, and given Neeson’s listless performance, he may be right.
“Marlowe” has the look and feel of an old time Hollywood noir, but is a pale imitation of the real thing. The golden haze that hangs over every frame can’t disguise the fact that this is a movie comprised of a series of questions with unsatisfying answers in search of a meaningful story.
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 documentary “Midnight Return,” “The Insult,” Lebanon’s first-ever Academy Award nomination for best foreign-language film and “In the Fade” starring Diane Kruger.
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 documentary “Midnight Return,” “The Insult,” Lebanon’s first-ever Academy Award nomination for best foreign-language film and “In the Fade” starring Diane Kruger.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
To paraphrase James Baldwin, “The most dangerous creation of any society is the woman who has nothing to lose.” “In the Fade” (“Aus dem Nichts”), the new thriller from German director Fatih Akin, brings this truism to life.
When we first meet Katja (Diane Kruger in her first German language film) she has a normal life. Living in Germany, married to Turkish immigrant accountant Nuri (Numan Acar), she has a young son named Rocco and a large extended family. Her well ordered life is disrupted, forever changed, when Nuri and Rocco are killed in a Neo-Nazi nail bomb attack. Her life in shards she attempts suicide, endures a drawn out court trial—“Imagine if they had gotten me and Rocco and Nuri had lived. He wouldn’t have stood for all this chit chat,” she says of the court case.—and finally, a showdown between her and the people responsible for tearing her life apart.
“In the Fade’s” story of terrorism and violence against immigrants is a timely one. Footage like the bombed out storefront where Nuri did business have become commonplace on the nightly news. What is less commonplace, on the news anyway, is the revenge aspect. Her need for vengeance, no matter the cost, drives the final third of the film.
Broken into three distinct segments, “The Family,” “Justice” and “The Sea,” the film almost feels like three separate shorts bound together by one character. Kruger is the glue that makes the movie as compelling as it is. A churning vessel of rage, hurt and despair, she is a very human presence at the centre of a bleak story.
“In the Fade” closes with a title card detailing the violence against immigrants in Germany each year. It is a powerful statement made in a movie that drives the point home by honing the horror of widespread violence down to one, very personal story.
