The Abyss The perfect antidote to the oppressive heat and humidity of a summer’s day is the oppressive cold and dark, deep down in the ocean where Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio are with a crew in an undersea oil rig under siege by a hurricane, navy SEALS gone loco and aliens. This is […]
Hillary Titley
Posted inArts + Music
Occupy first class
The biggest name associated with the new miniseries, Titanic, airing now on Global and due on DVD later in April, isn’t Lyndsey Marshal, whom you’ll recognize as Cleopatra from HBO’s Rome, nor Maria Doyle Kennedy, familiar from her work on The Tudors, or Toby Jones, who played Truman Capote in 2006’s Infamous, but rather the […]
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Going to the movies versus home entertainment
Let us take a moment to recognize the heroes of movie-watching in Halifax: the Carbon Arcs, the Atlantic Film Festivals and the Video Differences of our city. Let’s remark upon their variety, their expertise and their dedication and resolve to not take their benefits in vain, nor their deficits too personally. Let’s meditate on them […]
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Film Fest Reviews
FEATURE FILMS Higher Ground – Friday, September 16, Park Lane 7, 7:05pm Naturalism and a radiant intelligence have been the distinguishing features of Vera Farmiga’s acting performances, and it’s a quality she brings to her directorial debut. Farmiga takes command in front of and behind the camera, playing a religious convert whose creeping doubt in […]
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Everyone’s a critic
The summer movie season is over, and though critics hated The Smurfs and Transformers, they were big hits. In response, Team Coast sounds off on movies they love that (almost) no one else does. Ishtar It’s telling that four of the five movies on this list are comedies; what’s funny is the most subjective thing. […]
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Critics’ Picks 2010: DVDs
Apocalypse Now (Three-Disc Full Disclosure Edition) (Lionsgate) It occurs to me that I’ve owned more versions of Apocalypse Now, on more video formats, than any other movie. As this Blu-ray includes both the original masterpiece, Apocalypse Now Redux, and George Hickenlooper’s Hearts of Darkness documentary, it will hopefully be the last. –MP Cabin Fever 2: […]
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The King’s Speech is a royal drama
The lovely film The King‘s Speech is about all things that we think of when we think of the best of the UK, particularly its WWII legacy. This is a nation that can sometimes get it right and rise to the occasion, and carry on under difficult circumstances. The King‘s Speech tells the tale of […]
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The Dawn Treader‘s mass appeal
There is an unfortunate tendency for some of these family-oriented movie series to be exclusively written for those who have pored over the inert fantastical babble of the source material or preceding films. (I’m thinking of the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean films as the primary examples.) How obligated is an entry in […]
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The Next Three Days is seriously unsatisfying
Paul Haggis directs Russell Crowe in this jail-break movie of stifling seriousness. Elizabeth Banks, Crowe’s glam wife and mother to their moppet son, is accused and convicted of a co-worker’s murder. She chafes under the pressures of prison life and the separation from her family. (Also, her hair goes to shit.) Is she innocent or […]
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Burlesque brings a little deja vu
Christina Aguilera’s small town girl Ali takes a job at Cher’s aging burlesque club in downtown LA, naturally promoting herself to centre stage. Burlesque doesn’t deviate at all from the tropes of show-biz success pictures and while its pleasures are reliable, its predictability tarnishes its star-shine. TV’s Glee has simultaneously pushed song-and-dance exuberance into mainstream […]
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Between a Stone and a hard place
Up for parole, Gerald “Stone” Creeson (Edward Norton) sits across from his parole officer, Jack Mabry (Robert DeNiro), and begins an impassioned, coarse and ultimately manipulative campaign for his release. Stone sets his perpetually aroused wife, Lucetta (Mila Jovovich), on Jack to aid his cause, tacitly relying on his wife’s ability to deploy sexuality when […]
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Inside Job gets a grip
According to Inside Job, the seeds of America’s current bleak economic situation were sown all the way in the 1980s, when decades of care and caution gave way to ruthless deregulation. Since then, the financial system has been held hostage by blue-chip boobs like Larry Summers, Allan Greenspan and Harry Paulsen, who insulate themselves from […]