Lindsay McCarney

[image-4]Published June 19, 2008.The Grand Directed by: directed by Zak Penn(Anchor Bay/ITN)Improvised comedy The Grand features Werner Herzog playing an angry German poker player and TV’s Mr. Kotter (Gabe Kaplan) in his first acting role since a 1984 Murder, She Wrote episode.Those are just two of the ringers onboard for director Zak Penn’s charming little […]

True story: Al Pacino and Harvey Keitel have both played characters named Victor. (Keitel played Victor the cleaner in Point of No Return; Pacino apparently played “Viktor Taransky,” in S1m0ne.) But this article’s not about guys named Victor. It’s about cinematic Satans. And Pacino and Keitel have both played him, too. Why all the hellfire? […]

[image-4]Published June 05, 2008.Grace is Gone Directed by: James C. Strouse (Weinstein Company) Directed by When Stanley (John Cusack) loses his wife Grace in the Iraq War, he’s left with more to deal with than his own sadness. Unable to break the news to his daughters (Shélan O’Keefe, Gracie Bednarczyk), Stanley instead proposes the world’s […]

[image-4]Published June 12, 2008.The Onion MovieDirected by: Directed by Tom Kuntz and Mike Maguire(20th Century Fox) One sketch in The Onion Movie features faux film critics reviewing The Onion Movie itself. In it, a turtleneck-clad talking head describes the film as “vulgar, lowbrow potty humour thinly disguised as satire.” It’s canny of the film’s writers […]

Sure, summer’s all about flip-flops and festival-going, and wearing sunglasses that potentially make you look like a douche-bag. But it’s also a season jam-packed with downtime—and thus, potential movie-watching time. There’s an undeniable pleasure in skipping the beach every once and a while, and chilling out with some quality entertainment and Häagen-Dazs. (Deny it! I […]

[image-4]Published May 29, 2008.The Air I BreatheDirected by: Directed by Jieho Lee (Velocity/Thinkfilm)
Writer/director Jieho Lee had lofty goals for The Air I Breathe. According to IMDb, the film’s “based on an ancient Chinese proverb that breaks life down into four emotional cornerstones.” Consequently, characters sport thematically appropriate names like Love and Happiness. (To be fair, […]

Wristcutters: A Love StoryDirected by: Goran Dukic(Lionsgate/Maple)Lonely Zia (Patrick Fugit) works in a crappy pizza joint and lives in a shabby apartment. He spends his nights in a dank, badly lit bar. The colours he sees are muted and the people he meets are damaged goods. The world in Wristcutters: A Love Story resembles the […]

The Hottie and NottieDirected by: Tom Putnam(Liberation Entertainment)The Hottie and the Nottie stars Paris Hilton, Step by Step’s Christine Lakin and an actor who insists on calling himself The Greg Wilson. It’s the kind of movie that only an ironic hipster or a Step by Step completist could love. But just how bad is it? […]