Posts Tagged ‘Naomi Watts’

RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY AUGUST 11, 2017.

Richard joins CP24 to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including the devil doll flick “Annabelle: Creation,” the Jeremy Renner thriller “Wind River” and Jenny Slate’s dramedy “Landline.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

RICHARD’S CTV NEWSCHANNEL WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS & MORE FOR AUGUST 11.

Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the big weekend movies including the devil doll flick “Annabelle: Creation,” the Jeremy Renner thriller “Wind River” and Jenny Slate’s dramedy “Landline.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

THE GLASS CASTLE: 2 ½ STARS. “melts into a puddle of unnecessary sentimentality.”

Jeannette Walls’s childhood was the stuff of movies. Raised by free-spirited parents, she and her siblings were nomads, shunted around the country chasing the dream of an uncompromised life. “Daddy says where we are,” young Jeannette (Chandler Head) says, “is where home is.”

When we first see Jeannette (played as an adult by Brie Larson) it’s 1989. She is a successful gossip columnist for New York Magazine, engaged to David (Max Greenfield) an up-and-coming investment banker. Her cab ride home from a fancy dinner is interrupted by two homeless people who disrupt traffic as they garbage pick from a dumpster. Upset, she ignores them as the cab drives through the intersection.

Turns out the two are her parents, Rex (Woody Harrelson) and Rose Mary (Naomi Watts). The two are happily squatting in an abandoned building, continuing a lifelong tradition of living off the grid. He schools them by experience. “You learn from living,” he says. “Everything else is a damn lie.”

Rex is short tempered, an often drunk dreamer always looking for a place to start over. Rose Mary is an artist who redefines free-spirited. Together they raised their kids in an uncompromising manner. On the road constantly they hopscotch around the country at Rex’s whim, kept going by his promise of building them a gleaming new home, their very own Glass Castle. “All this running around is temporary,” he says. “We just need the perfect location for our castle.”

Throughout good times and bad Jeannette has a special relationship with Rex but his drinking spins out of control she realizes the kids have to go their own way.

Shades of last year’s ode to antiestablishment living “Captain Fantastic” hang heavy over “The Glass Castle.” Both chronicle overbearing fathers and their pliable children but the new film feels different because it never entirely embraces the alternative lifestyle it portrays. Walls—whose memoir forms the basis of the movie—is ultimately sympathetic in her portrayal of the man who infuriated her as much as he raised her. It is a father and daughter story about overcoming a non-traditional upbringing while also realizing he made her the person she is today.

It’s Jeannette’s life but it is Harrelson who steals the show. Is he the most versatile actor working today? He’s a journeyman who jumps from franchises to character dramas, from comedies to tragedies. As Rex he’s a volatile presence, loving one second, throwing a chair threw a window the next. Harrelson never plays him as a villain. Rather he explores the depths of the complex character, finding the kernels of humanity that allow us to look past his bluster.

By the time the end credits roll “The Glass Castle” feels stretched, as though director Destin Daniel Cretton doesn’t want the story to end. It’s a little too flashback-y in its last half hour, showing us things we already know, and a big epiphany moment—complete with swelling orchestra—feels forced. There are some heartfelt and emotional moments early on but as the story unfolds Creton allows it to melt into a puddle of unnecessary sentimentality.

RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY MAY 12, 2017.

Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Alien: Covenant,” the return of one of the most fearsome alien species ever, the Xenomorph, the continuing adventures of Greg Heffley in “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul,” Liev Schreiber as the real-life Rocky in “Chuck” and the edgy rom com “The Lovers.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

RICHARD’S CTV NEWSCHANNEL WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS & MORE FOR MAY 19.

Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the big weekend movies, the Xenomorphic Alien: Covenant,” the whimptastic adventures of Greg Heffley in “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul,” Liev Schreiber as the real-life Rocky in “Chuck” and the edgy rom com “The Lovers.”

Watch the whole ting HERE!

CHUCK: 3 STARS. “little known boxing story that feels familiar.”

Chuck Wepner goes by many names. To some he is The Champ, a heavyweight boxer who once went fifteen rounds with Muhammad Ali. To others he is the Bayonne Bleeder, a fighter sometimes sidelined by his tendency to bleed out all over the ring. Still others call him the Real Rocky in reference to the rumour that his career inspired the Sylvester Stallone movie. He’s an American brawler played by Liev Schreiber in a new movie simply called “Chuck.”

Wepner became a local hero when he was tapped to take on boxing legend George Foreman. There was just one catch. Foreman had to beat Muhammad Ali first. The odds were in his favour but, in an upset, Foreman lost. That defeat should have put Wepner out of the running but the Ali fight was being positioned as a battle of the races and since he was the only white boxer on a long list of fighters qualified to take on the champ, he got the gig. The odds against him were 40-to-1 but the lure of a $100,000 payday was too great to resist. As expected he lost but the fact he shared the ring with Ali burnished his reputation, if not his bank account.

And thus the template of Wepner’s career was set. He’s an also ran, a man who can see the brass ring but never quite grab hold of it.

In the wake of the Ali fight Wepner’s life was turned topsy-turvy. He coulda been a contender but instead moonlighted as a liquor salesman. He was a star at night, hanging around clubs, cheating on his wife Phyllis (Elisabeth Moss) and developing a cocaine problem. His notoriety increased with the release of “Rocky,” the Stallone movie reportedly semi-based on Wepner’s life. A failed audition for “Rocky 2” forces the fighter further down the rabbit hole into a “Requiem for a Heavyweight-esque” life outside the ring.

“Chuck’s” story is little known but feels familiar. The “Rocky” twist and Ali fight add some nice colour to the tale, but this is, essentially, another retelling of an arrogant also ran boxer whose life outside the ring spiralled out of control. In Schreiber’s hands it’s easy to see why people were drawn to Wepner. He’s charismatic and despite his myriad flaws, likeable.

Good supporting work also comes from Moss (in an underwritten role), Ron Perlman and Jim Gaffigan as Wepner’s manager and best friend respectively but the movie, directed by Philippe Falardeau, like it’s main character, feels workmanlike. It covers large sections of the man’s life when it feels like a concentrated version may have been more compelling.

RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY APRIL 8, 2016.

Screen Shot 2016-04-08 at 2.21.04 PMRichard and CP24 anchor host Nneka Elliot have a look at he weekend’s big releases, Melissa McCarthy’s “The Boss,” Jake Gyllenhaal in “Demolition” and “Hardcore Henry’s” wild action.

Watch the whole thing HERE!

RICHARD’S “CANADA AM” REVIEWS FOR APRIL 8 WITH JEFF HUTCHESON.

Screen Shot 2016-04-08 at 10.38.38 AMRichard and “Canada AM” host Jeff Hutcheson kick around the weekend’s big releases. They find out if the boss is always right in Melissa McCarthy’s “The Boss,” if Jake Gyllenhaal can overcome his grief in “Demolition,” how Hank Williams became a star in “I Saw the Light” and if “Hardcore Henry” should come with a medical advisory.

Watch the whole thing HERE!

 

Metro: Jake Gyllenhaal’s continuous quest to explore unlikeable characters

DemolitioncolumnBy Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus

Grief is no laughing matter, but with Demolition Jake Gyllenhaal has made a whimsical movie about a man on the edge of falling into the abyss.

The film continues Gyllenhaal’s quest to explore characters who aren’t immediately likeable or understandable. No other mainstream actor puts himself or herself out there as consistently or successfully as Gyllenhaal. He takes chances, throwing himself at edgy portrayals of real people. Recently we’ve seen him as Nightcrawler’s reptilian Lou Bloom, a slick-talking drifter who falls into the freelance news gathering business, a man who seeks his doppelganger in Enemy and Southpaw’s inarticulate brute with a heart of gold, World Middleweight Boxing Champion Billy Hope.

In Demolition plays investment banker Davis Mitchell. Wealthy and happy, his life is turned upside down when he and his wife Julia are bickering about banal home stuff when the car they’re in is broadsided and she is killed.

Instead of being plunged into grief Davis becomes numb, impervious to the seven stages that usually accompany grave loss. Going back to work immediately after the funeral, however, his behaviour becomes increasingly strange. When he writes a complaint letter to a vending machine company demanding a refund he finds an outlet for his feelings and a therapist of sorts in customer service rep Karen Moreno, played by Naomi Watts. As his letters grow increasingly heartfelt and raw Karen’s sympathetic ear and later, her rebellious son, help Davis demolish his life so he can rebuild his world.

“It’s a story about a guy who begins the movie in a conventional way and ends the movie through an unconventional journey,” said Gyllenhaal at a press conference I hosted with him at TIFF last year, “feeling however [he wants and needs to], and not how society tells him to feel.”

Here the thirty-five-year old actor delivers strong work, grounding the film’s quirkiness in a character you may not understand but can empathize with. He does the heavy lifting and his work humanizes this offbeat film.

When Davis spontaneously dances on the streets of New York or demolishes his martial home it’s outrageous, but it is the sight of a man in pain refusing to face up to the fact that he wasn’t a very good husband and will never be able to make amends to Julia. It’s occasionally very funny, other times tragic and Gyllenhaal drifts between the two poles effortlessly.

The surreal dance scenes are surprising for the audience, but Gyllenhaal says they were a surprise to him as well. “I always looked on the schedule for when the dancing was going to be,” he said at the presser, revealing that director Jean Marc Vallee shot the scenes spontaneously.

“The first time I danced, we were on the train and [Vallee] said, ‘Okay, the train’s pulling in,’ and handed me an iPod, gave me an earphone and said, ‘Are you ready to dance? Let’s go. By the end, I didn’t want to stop dancing, I made like a whirling dervish.”

Gyllenhaal takes the path less trodden, but it has resulted in a body of work populated by interesting and unusual characters.

“I think the people I admire as artists are the people who really listen to themselves,” he says, “even if it is to the detriment of what people might consider success. I’d rather be myself and do what I love than listen to someone else and follow that role and be unhappy.”