Posts Tagged ‘Legend’

CINEPLEX: RICHARD ON THE 2017 Flashback Film Fest, FEBRUARY 3 – 9.

Cineplex Events has today announced that the widely popular Great Digital Film Festival will now be known as Flashback Film Fest.  The event is Canada’s only coast-to-coast festival, bringing a line-up of sci-fi, fantasy and fan favourites back to the big screen.  This year, Cineplex Events and renowned film critic, Richard Crouse, curated a line-up of 17 of the most blood-pumping, thrill-inducing and heart-warming films in cinema that will screen in over 24 cities across the country from February 3-9, 2017.  

Please click here for a message from Richard Crouse and Cineplex Pre-Show Host Tanner Zipchen. 

“We wanted to give the festival a new name that better reflects how it has evolved and why it has been so popular over the years,” said Brad LaDouceur, Vice President, Event Cinema. “Flashback Film Fest fits perfectly with our Event Cinema business which offers guests exciting, unique content that ranges from classic films to renowned stage productions.  We take them on tours of famous galleries and put them courtside at sporting events without them ever having to set foot on a plane, or in this case, a time machine.”  

“The great thing about this festival is that audiences will have a chance to relive these movies in the way they were meant to be seen; on a big screen, with an audience,” said author and film critic, Richard Crouse.  “The best and most powerful way to see a movie is to fully immerse yourself in the theatre experience, surrounded by people who are enjoying it just as much as you are.  I’m personally looking forward to seeing films like Fight Club, Blade RunnerThe Final Cut, Pulp Fiction and Shallow Grave in all their glory.”

The 2017 Flashback Film Fest Line-up includes:

  • Air Force One (1997) *20 year anniversary
  • Blade Runner – The Final Cut (2007) *10 year anniversary/35 year anniversary of original
  • Blood Simple (1984)
  • Fargo (1996)
  • The Fifth Element (1997) *20 year anniversary
  • Fight Club (1999)
  • The Fugitive (1993)
  • Groundhog Day (1993)
  • Heat (1995)
  • Jurassic Park (1993)
  • Legend (1985)
  • The Princess Bride (1987) *30 year anniversary
  • Pulp Fiction (1994)
  • The Running Man (1987) *30 year anniversary
  • Shallow Grave (1994)
  • Starship Troopers (1997) *20 year anniversary
  • Trainspotting (1996)

Tickets for festival films cost $7.99, $6.99 for 5 or more films and new this year film fanatics can buy the “I Want It All” pass for $69.99 allowing them access to all 17 films for a price of $4.11 per admission. For a complete list of show times, or to purchase tickets, visit Cineplex.com/FBFF .

Participating theatres include:

British Columbia

  • Cineplex Cinemas Langley
  • SilverCity Victoria Cinemas
  • The Park Theatre
  •  

Alberta

  • Cineplex Odeon Eau Claire Market Cinemas
  • Scotiabank Theatre Edmonton

 

Manitoba

  • Scotiabank Theatre Winnipeg

 

Saskatchewan

  • Cineplex Cinemas Regina
  • Scotiabank Theatre Saskatoon and VIP

 

Ontario

  • Cineplex Cinemas Courtney Park
  • Cineplex Odeon Devonshire Mall Cinemas
  • Galaxy Cinemas Waterloo
  • Galaxy Cinemas Guelph
  • Scotiabank Theatre Toronto
  • Cineplex Cinemas Scarborough
  • SilverCity Newmarket Cinemas
  • Cineplex Cinemas Ancaster
  • SilverCity London Cinemas
  • Cineplex Odeon South Keys Cinema
  • SilverCity Sudbury Cinemas
  • SilverCity Thunder Bay Cinemas

 

Quebec

  • Cinéma Banque Scotia Montréal

 

Atlantic

  • Cineplex Cinemas Trinity Drive
  • Scotiabank Theatre St. John’s
  • Cineplex Cinemas Park Lane

Cineplex: Richard and Tanner Zipchen announce the Flashback Film Festival!

Richard and Cineplex pre-show host Tanner Zipchen announce this year’s Flashback Film Festival! More details to come… in the meantime watch Tanner and Richard HERE!

RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY DECEMBER 4, 2015.

Screen Shot 2015-12-04 at 3.40.10 PMRichard’s CP24” reviews! This week it’s Tom Hardy times two in “Legend” and Sarah Gadon as Princess Elizabeth in “A Royal Night Out.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

RICHARD’S “CANADA AM” REVIEWS FOR DECENMBER 4 WITH MARCI IEN.

Screen Shot 2015-12-04 at 12.01.04 PMRichard “Canada AM” reviews! This week it’s Tom Hardy times two in “Legend,” Sarah Silverman in “I Smile Back” and Sarah Gadon as Princess Elizabeth in “A Royal Night Out.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

Metro In Focus: Tom Hardy’s small edgy roles deserve a double take

Screen Shot 2015-12-01 at 3.55.46 PMBy Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus

Like Wrigley’s “Double your pleasure! Double your fun!” gum, this weekend’s movie Legend is two Tom Hardys in one. He plays the dual roles of Britain’s most notorious gangsters, Ronnie and Reginald Kray, identical twins and violent thugs who ruled London’s underworld during the 1950s and 1960s.

Previously real-life siblings Martin and Gary Kemp of ’80s new wave band Spandau Ballet impersonated the brothers in the 1990 film The Krays, but these days special effects allow Hardy to play both brothers. “The movie’s a testament to the Krays’ ability to get away with everything, for a while, anyway,” wrote Ty Burr in the Boston Globe. “But it’s better evidence of Tom Hardy’s ability to do just about anything.”

Already this year we’ve seen the talented actor in the Mad Max reboot Fury Road, the musical London Road and the crime thriller Child 44. Soon he’ll play opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant and is currently shooting Taboo, a new BBC mini series scheduled to air next year.

He’s also made waves as The Dark Knight Rises’ brooding hulk Bane and dream-dancer Eames in the megahit Inception.

In between these box office busters he’s appeared in smaller, edgier films that deserve a look. Here are some of the other films that have helped Tom Hardy become legend.

Hillbilly Hardy:

Lawless takes place during Prohibition. The bootlegging business is booming, run by hillbillies who’ll sell to anyone with a buck and a thirst. The most notorious are the Bondurant family; headed by Forrest (Hardy) who engages in a knock down, drag out moonshine war with a corrupt lawman played by Guy Pearce. Hardy leads the cast as a soft-spoken thug with a brainy bent. “It’s not the violence that sets men apart,” he says, “it is the distance he is prepared to go.”

When he isn’t waxing philosophical he’s busy earning most of the film’s few laughs. It’s a natural, unaffected performance that really shows what he can do without a mask strapped to his face.

Solo Hardy:

In these days of maximalist moviemaking Locke goes the opposite way, trimming the movie down to one claustrophobic setting and a single on-screen actor. Locke is the first movie in recent memory that would probably work as well as a radio drama as it does a film. Hardy is Ivan Locke, a straight arrow construction foreman determined to be at the birth of his child. In his car, he’s battling traffic for the hour-and-a-half drive to London and the mother-to-be’s hospital. Trouble is, the child is the result of a lonely one-night stand and he’s a married man.

The entire film takes place in the front seat of Locke’s car, in real time, as he drives the M1. We see through the windshield, into the backseat and the display screen of car phone and GPS. Most of all we see Hardy’s face, which, even though obscured by a beard, still allows his charisma to ooze through. His face is the engine of the film, his talent the driver.

Hardheaded Hardy:

In the Drop, Hardy he plays Bob Saginowski, a mild mannered bartender at a Brooklyn neighbourhood pub owned by the Chechnyan mafia. Like many of the borough’s bars, Marv’s is sometimes used as a “drop,” a place where gangsters secretly hide money until it is collected by their crime bosses.

As Bob, Hardy is a cypher; kind to dogs, shy and lovesick, he is an average neighbourhood guy. Except in this neighbourhood average guys have pasts, and Hardy does a nice job of playing a man who is trying to move on while the past tries to stop him in his tracks.

LEGEND: 3 STARS. “glossy but glossed over look at violent men in bespoke suits.”

Screen Shot 2015-12-01 at 3.56.47 PMIn “Legend,” a new true crime drama about Britain’s most notorious gangsters, Tom Hardy plays the dual roles of Ronnie and Reginald Kray. Identical twins, the violent thugs ruled London’s underworld during the 1950s and 1960s and became celebrities of a sort, even being photographed by David Bailey and featured on television. Question is, will Hardy’s mirror imaging of the guys be like Wrigley’s “Double your pleasure! Double your fun!” gum or too much of a good thing?

“Legend” begins with voiceover from Reggie’s wife Frances Shea (Emily Browning). “London in the 1960s,” she says. “Everyone has a story about the Krays. Walk into any pub and everyone had a lie about them.” The film strings those romanticizes those stories in a genre-friendly tale of two men on the rise through London’s underworld.

Reggie is a slickster, a thug with a soft spot for Frances and the prestige of owning nightclubs. Ron is unpredictable, a psychopath prone to beating people with a hammer. The brothers are a unit, but two very different cogs of the same wheel. Reggie is straight, Ron is gay, openly so, which in London’s 1960s underworld was an enlightened stance. Reggie tried to work within the system; Ron tried to dismantle it. The thing that bound them was blood, theirs and that of their victims. “My loyalty to my brother is how I measure myself,” says Reggie.

Told from Frances’s point of view, the movie paints a vivid picture of her relationship with Reggie—he sweet talks her with, “The center of the earth can be anywhere you’d like… even the east end of London.”—and Swingin’ London with nightclubs and violent scenes that play like Scorsese with an English accent. On the personal side of the story the downside to being married to a gangster with a blood-is-thicker-than-water connection to his volatile brother quickly becomes apparent and brings the story to a film noir conclusion.

Written and directed by “LA Confidential” and “Mystic River” screenwriter Brian Helgeland “Legend” is a companion piece to the 1990 biopic “The Krays,” which starred actual twins, Spandau Ballet’s Martin and Gary Kemp as Reggie and Ron. The new film is less gritty—there is nothing that comes close to the brutal horror of Gary Kemp using a sword to give a stranger a gruesome “permanent smile”—choosing instead to play up the glamour of the period and the legend of London’s gangland.

It’s a less sensational portrait of the brothers but just as gimmicky in its own way. Special effects allow Hardy to play both brothers and while his performances are frequently impressive, it often feels like a trick to distract from an underwritten story. He effortlessly nails Reggie’s toxic mix of charm and brutality but as Ron seems to be trying too hard. Pulling faces that wouldn’t be out of place in “Reefer Madness,” Hardy strains to perform through facial prosthetics, occasionally to unintended comic effect.

“Legend” is aptly titled. More Kray Bros lore than nuance, it provides a glossy but glossed over look at the violent men behind the bespoke suits.

Richard picks NKPR’s Top 10 Toronto International Film Festival Films of 2015!

Screen Shot 2015-09-05 at 10.19.33 AMFrom nkpr.net:

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) premieres some of the most anticipated blockbuster films and attracts some of the biggest A-listers in Hollywood. This year is certainly no exception with expected appearances from Julianne Moore, Matt Damon, Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Johnny Depp, Rachel McAdams and many more.

Each year we get the inside scoop on the hottest TIFF premieres from renowned Canadian critic Richard Crouse. As the the regular film critic for CTV’s Canada AM, the 24-hour news source CTV’s News Channel, and CP24, Crouse is an expert in what films to see…and what films to skip.

From biopics to fantasy films, he’s rounded up his Top 10 Must-See Films of TIFF 2015 exclusively for NKPR.

Read the whole thing HERE!

 

 

 

From epic fantasy to B-movie horrors, elves are hot in Hollywood.

elfBy Richard Crouse Metro – Canada

When we think of elves at this time of year visions of Santa’s helpers fill our heads.

The cute, industrious and diminutive creatures from the North Pole can be seen everywhere in December in Christmas TV specials, greeting cards and movies like Arthur Christmas and Santa Claus: The Movie.

One of the most famous movie elves is Buddy, played by Will Ferrell in the neo-classic Elf.

“You’re not an elf,” says Leon the Snowman. “You’re six-foot-three and had a beard since you were fifteen.”

So technically he’s not really an elf, just a human raised by elves but he has more Christmas spirit than Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder and Blitzen put together.

This weekend, just weeks before December 25, Buddy is joined on the big screen by a very different kind of elf.

“She’s slightly reckless and totally ruthless and doesn’t hesitate to kill.” That’s how Evangeline Lilly describes the 600-year-old “she-elf” Tauriel from this weekend’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

The bow-and-arrow wielding character is new to the J.R.R. Tolkien movie franchise, created by director Peter Jackson and his co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.

“She’s our redhead,” says Boyens. “We created her for that reason. To bring that energy into the film, that feminine energy. We believe it’s completely within the spirit of Tolkien.”

Buddy and Tauriel are just two of the many kinds of movie elves.

Elves, or (Gelfling as they’re called in the flick), are the main focus of the Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal.

Dobby the House Elf was voted the No. 1 favourite magical creature in the Harry Potter series by NextMovie.com and Thor: The Dark World featured Dark Elves, an ancient race of dangerous beings whose spaceships are powered by black holes.

The cheeseball b-movie Elves features the tagline, “They’re Not Working for Santa Anymore.” Well, if not Santa, then who? Nazis, that’s who.

Finally Tom Cruise consorted with an elf named Honeythorn Gump in Legend, the Ridley Scott film The New York Times called “a slap-dash amalgam of Old Testament, King Arthur, The Lord of the Rings and any number of comic books.”

Swiss actor David Bennett played the feisty elfin sidekick who not only is the protector of the world’s last two unicorns but, along with elves Screwball, Brown Tom and Oona, helps Cruise’s character save the world from the nasty Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry).