RSA Films has added award-winning theatre and film director John Crowley to its U.K./U.S. commercial roster. A versatile storyteller with a background in directing both Broadway and West End productions, Crowley also directs episodic television, commercials, and feature films.
His 2015 film Brooklyn, starring Saoirse Ronan, received three Academy Award nominations and won the Best British Film BAFTA. BBC named Brooklyn as one of the 100 greatest films of the 21st century.
Crowley first received critical acclaim for his 2003 feature Intermission, following with Boy A (Andrew Garfield, Peter Mullan) for which he won the Best Director BAFTA. Additional feature credits include Is Anybody There? starring Michael Caine, and his most recent film, 2019’s The Goldfinch, adapted from the Donna Tartt novel by Peter Straughan, and starring Ansel Elgort, Nicole Kidman, and Sarah Paulson.
Among Crowley’s commercial credits are ads for Formula 1, and Tesco’s 2013 Christmas campaign from agency W+K. Prior to joining RSA, Crowley was handled by London-based Tomboy Films.
“John’s features, commercials and theatre productions are all imbued with a sense of craft and nuance,” commented Kai Hsiung, RSA U.K. managing director. “He is a director we’ve long admired, and we’re really looking forward to exploring new narrative and commercial opportunities together.”
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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