Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including the Melissa McCarthy mob story “The Kitchen,” the kid’s horror “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” the family adventure of “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” and the Casey Affleck drama :Light of My Life.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including the live action “Dora and the Lost City of Gold,” the mildly scary “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” the family drama “Luce” and the mob tale “The Kitchen” with CFRA morning show guest host Matt Harris.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
A weekly feature from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest and most interesting movies! This week Richard looks two kid-friendly flicks, “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” and “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” and the intense family drama “Luce.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
For most parents reading this Dora the Explorer needs no introduction. The animated Latina superstar has a level of preschooler fame that has inspired a cottage industry that includes three dozen foreign language adaptations, books, play kitchens, cosmetics, hygiene products and anything else on which you can slap Dora’s adorable image. Nineteen years after her TV debut Dora makes the leap to the big screen in the live-action family-adventure “Dora and the Lost City of Gold.”
“Instant Family’s” Isabela Moner plays the explorer, an intrepid youngster who grew up in the jungles of South America with her archaeology professor parents (Michael Peña and Eva Longoria).
As her parents are on the cusp of their greatest discovery, the lost Incan city of Parapata, said to contain more gold than the rest of the world combined, the homeschooled adventurer is sent off to live with her aunt, uncle and cousin Diego (Jeff Wahlberg) and high school in Los Angeles. “I think it would be good for you to be out in the world, around kids your own age,” her mother says.
She’s rather be trekking through the jungles of Peru with her folks and sassy little monkey Boots (voice of Danny Trejo), but a much different adventure, involving mean-spirited teenagers who nickname her Dorka and metal detectors, awaits her in California. “I never felt lonely when I was alone in the jungle,” she says, “but now surrounded by kids I feel alone.”
When her parents disappear Dora, Diego and two schoolmates are kidnapped by some terrible people who want the kids to trek through the jungle, (“You have nothing to be scared of. The trouble is perfectly safe. Just don’t touch anything or agree it’s too deep.”) track down the parents and the location of the riches of Parapata.
A great deal of humour comes from Dora’s naïve approach to school life. “I hope this is a wild goose chase,” her class’s mean girl Sammy (Madeleine Madden). “I hope it is,” Dora replies. “I love chasing wild geese until I catch one. They are nasty.” It’s good situational humour that sets up Dora’s intelligence—the fourth wall lessons from the television show are also firmly in place. “Can you say neurotoxicity?”—her social ineptness and the character’s guilelessness.
The fast-paced film is part message movie featuring life lessons about how anything is possible if you believe in yourself how to do a poo hole in the jungle (“I tell you this to make you wiser,” Dora sings, “and because it’s natural fertilizer.”), part “Scooby-Doo style adventure. There’s even a trippy hallucination scene that pays direct homage to the movie’s cartoon roots.
Like the main character “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” is relentlessly upbeat, brought to live-action with fun, performances that, while broad, still have heart. It’s both an updating of thr popular character and a throwback to old-school family adventure films.
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Erin Paul to have a look at the weekend’s big releases, “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” the Christopher Plummer road trip “Boundaries,” the family drama “Leave No Trace” and the love letter to one of Manhattan’s most famous hotels, “Always at the Carlyle.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
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 “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” the Christopher Plummer road trip “Boundaries” and the glitz documentary “Always at the Carlyle.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“Do you guys put the word quantum in front of everything?”
That’s the question Paul Rudd, playing Scott Lang / Ant-Man, asks in the new Marvel movie “Ant-Man and The Wasp.” Having seen the film I wonder why he didn’t speak up earlier, like when the screenwriters were scribbling about quantum physics, quantum realm, quantum void, quantum this and quantum that. These movies are supposed to be about a smart alecy guy who can shrink himself down to the size of an ant to solve crimes, not the Heisenberg principle.
The movie begins as Lang has just three days left on his house arrest following the events of “Captain America: Civil War.” Trapped in his apartment he has a strange dream. He sees Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), wife of scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), mother of Lilly van Dyne a.k.a. Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), trapped in the quantum wormhole she disappeared into three decades before. Meanwhile Hank and Lilly are perfecting a method to rescue their loved one from the quantum hike she now calls home. Trouble is, they can’t do it alone. They need any information that may be trapped in Rudd’s head and money from a grubby bad guy. Time is of the essence as Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), a spectral presence who can walk through walls, also seeks out Janet’s quantum power to heal her cellular disorder.
From the kitschy sounding title to the size-shifting characters to the scientific mumbo jumbo that takes up much of the screen time, “Ant-Man and The Wasp” is a throwback to drive-in movies of the 1950s. It’s been updated with better special effects and more authentic sounding science jargon, but make no mistake, for better and for worse, this has just as much in common with flickers like “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” and “Them!” as it does with the Avengers. Like the 50s b-movies that were undoubtedly an influence, this is a loud-n-proud genre film but like many of the Avengers films that are part of the Ant-Man family, it is marred by excess. Too many characters, too many story shards—a rescue mission, two sets of baddies chasing down the quantum technology, a romantic subplot, a family film angle—too much exposition to much quantum theory.
There is a funny scene about an hour into the movie where Michael Peña, playing Lang’s former cellmate and current business partner, recaps the story so far. It takes two minutes, is laugh-out-loud funny and completely negates the need for much of the exposition—people in this movie love to ask things like, “What have you done?”—that comes before it. Move that to the beginning of the film and they could have saved pages of dialogue and juiced up the film’s fun factor by at least fifty percent.
“Ant-Man and The Wasp” does plough some new ground—it is the first time a female superhero’s name is in the title of an MCU film—but feels scattershot in its execution.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show guest host Ken Connors to talk about the small scale superheroes “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” the Christopher Plummer road trip “Boundaries,” the father and daughter drama “Leave No Trace” and the love letter to one of Manhattan’s great hotels, “Always at the Carlyle.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
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“A Wrinkle in Time,” “The Strangers: Prey At Night” and “Meditation Park.”
Watch the whole thing HERE !
