Ridley Scott’s austere take on the legend of the Sherwood Forest prince of thieves has movie-goers recalling their feelings toward other notable adaptations of that man in tights. Versions of Robin Hood have ranged from grinning silliness (Mel Brooks’ spoof and the 1973 Disney animated romp) to sincere adventure (Errol Flynn’s classic 1930s portrayal, Sean […]
Hillary Titley
Posted inArts + Music
Nothing but a fur pile in Furry Vengeance
Furry Vengeance is bad. Bad like you would expect. Family films usually try to shove an unrefined and insincere message down your throats amid the groin jokes and Furry Vengeance is no exception, although, this time the message is “green.” (No details beyond that.) Now let’s have fun. Film reviews require a quick description of […]
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The Perfect Game almost hits it out of the park
A well-intentioned sports pic about the first non-American baseball team to conquer the Little League World Series. The team is the Monterrey Industrials from Mexico, coached by a going-to-seed ex-Major Leaguer who has retreated back to his ancestral home in shame. There, wallowing in self-pity, he is cajoled into coaching and shaping local boys into […]
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Nightmare on Elm Street is too thin for nightmare material
In this film and the superior 1984 original, the premise is the same: a fringe member of the early-childhood education job sector, Freddy Krueger is burned alive by a pitchfork mob as punishment for the kind of crimes that ensue when desire meets access. Krueger then kills the children of the mob in their nightmares. […]
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Glasses shatter at the sound of The Last Song
The films on which Nicholas Sparks’ novels are based are brethren of the same oeuvre, where the distance between romance and tragedy is never long, and how willing you are to give yourself over to the transparent emotional machinations of the star-crossed romance plot really depends on the quality of the performances offered. Rachel McAdams […]
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Hot Tub Time Machine whirls you back to an age of unimportance
Hot Tub Time Machine is as devoid of depth as its title is devoid of metaphorical flourish. That being said, it is mildly funny and more critical minds could go to town with the fact that its happy ending has the hot tubbers content with more money, bigger houses and sexier, more deferential wives. Star, […]
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Don’t resist Norweigan war film, Max Manus
With an unoriginal tone that reflects the usual austerity of WWII dramas, Norwegian film Max Manus nonetheless has a good story and tells it well. Portraying the true story of resistance fighter Max Manus (Aksel Hennie), famous for his death-defying escape from Gestapo clutches and his work as a saboteur of several Nazi war ships, […]
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The Bounty Hunter cuts off its own head
Shrill battle of the sexes; wash; rinse; repeat. Gerard Butler plays a bounty hunter tasked to bring in his feisty reporter ex-wife (she skipped out on traffic court). Do filmmakers not think of or not care about the question, “What on Earth do these two see in each other?” Maybe they do think of it, […]
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The Ghost Writer gets lost in the details
Time stretches out interminably like passages in a pontificating political memoir in Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer. More and more layers of mystery are added to the plot beyond the point of actually making sense of anything. Ewan McGregor plays the ghost writer of Pierce Brosnan’s Tony Blair-like ex PM’s memoirs, who discovers that Brosnan’s […]
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My Name is Khan a sincerely cutesy journey
A Bollywood blockbuster on Halifax screens, My Name is Khan thankfully plays here with none of the controversy that greeted its release in India in February. That tumult is too nuanced to elaborate here, but it is worth looking into independently as it comments on one of the questions My Name raises: Can people with […]
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Green Zone gets a green light
After consistently coming up short in searches for WMDs in Iraq, a frustrated US Army officer (Matt Damon) is enlisted by a CIA analyst, Brendan Gleason, weary of the Bush administration’s (repped by Greg Kennear) hubristic tactics, into a goose-chase for an Iraqi official who may or may not be able to straighten out the […]
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Crackie vibrates with determination
Mitsy (Meghan Greenly), a young woman in a small, ramshackle Newfoundland town, feels the sting of her mother’s (Jane Maggs) long-ago abandonment, the crush of her gran’s (Mary Walsh) zealous, protective guardianship and the thrill of shocking both of them by taking up with a stinking cad (Joel Hynes). This movie is special. It knows […]
