Mark Palermo

For anyone sick of Oscar season (when last year’s movies finally hit smaller cities hoping to garner widespread attention pre-awards ceremony), the competing first-wave January releases can be a relief. They’re the movies Hollywood doesn’t have a lot of faith in, or money behind—teen-skewed genre films that can risk idiosyncrasy because they’re neither expected to […]

The popularity of the youth dance film Stomp the Yard (the top film in North America) is a feat many reviewers and editors would rather ignore. Although it was screened for the regular critic markets, following the film’s first weekend Rotten Tomatoes counted only half as many reviews written for Stomp the Yard compared with […]

The Curse of the Golden Flower has at its centre a familiar idea: Beneath the face of esteemed social roles lies deceit and torment. Director Zhang Yimou illustrates this premise on a breathtaking canvas. Like many great filmmakers, Yimou (continuing with the period Hong Kong epics of his Hero and House of Flying Daggers) begins […]

Seeing through “buzz” (the promotional hype that constitutes most movie-writing) is a necessary aim of criticism. But lapdogs don’t want good movies. They want Dreamgirls. Bill Condon’s adaptation of the Broadway musical, based loosely on the career of The Supremes, distorts the legacy and major cultural impact of black music. It looks and plays like […]

This is a best-to-worst listing of the feature-length movies I saw this year, prior to December 15. Films with distributors are included based on their first North American release date. For example, Transamerica, Munich and The New World didn’t hit Halifax until January, but are considered last year’s films and Are not included in this […]

Nothing in Mel Gibson’s brutal Apocalypto makes a case for the superstar’s now frequently questioned sanity. And the film is better for it. Gibson fashions the year’s most posh, aggressive and, yes, insane action epic—the equivalent of Terrence Malick and Werner Herzog teaming up to make Death Wish VI. This isn’t a way of letting […]

Child actors showcase stand-up comic personas in Unaccompanied Minors, a conceptual mish-mash of Home Alone and The Terminal. The movie opts away from seasonal feeling to be a live action cartoon. But it rises somewhere higher profile blockbusters Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, X-Men: The Last Stand, Cars, V for Vendetta and The […]

At its most evident, Déjà Vu is Minority Report’s premise in reverse. But it samples from a whole variety of science fiction films and police thrillers. The result is somewhat shapeless—troubling mainly because the movie rarely convinces that its makers have proofread their premise. Yet it’s delivered with an assured pacing and discovery where the […]

If you view the James Bond franchise as a train derailed, Casino Royale not only gets back on track, it then jumps over a canyon. Granted, it’s not all an impressive journey—the first hour stutters around before finding its course—but in allowing Bond a natural depth, the action takes on a needed urgency. Pierce Brosnan […]