Welcome to yet another buddy comedy based on the insulting stereotype that married men are overgrown children stuck in a trap, the prisoners of joyless prudes who get off on denying their husbands pleasure. In this Farrelly Brothers film, Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis are granted a week of extramarital freedom by shrewish wives Jenna […]
Matt Semansky
Posted inArts + Music
Just Go With It goes where you’d expect
Adam Sandler has occasionally, in movies such as Punch-Drunk Love and Funny People, shown that he can act, or at least put a fresh spin on the volatile man-child schtick that’s made him famous. But he seems equally happy churning out Sandler-brand films comprised of kindergarten-level gags. For these half-assed efforts, he usually turns to […]
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Family circus
His Oscar-nominated film Incendies is a wrenching portrait of war, anger and pain, but for Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, it was a project sparked by love. Villeneuve was first set ablaze by Incendies—which translates into English as Scorched—when he saw Wajdi Mouawad’s stage play in 2004. “I think I seriously bought the two last […]
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Bieber’s big screen bio is premature
Few artists have followed an easier path to stardom than Justin Bieber, who was snapped up by Usher and L.A. Reid based on a few YouTube performances. So it’s a bit rich that this glossy biographical and concert documentary positions him as a scrappy music biz underdog. We never find out who these people are […]
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Love for Gnomeo & Juliet
The Bard’s most pop culture-friendly creation gets its umpteenth update in this animated comedy about star-crossed lovers who happen to be garden gnomes. Blue gnome Gnomeo (James MacAvoy) and red gnome Juliet (Emily Blunt) live in adjoining backyards, combatants-by-proxy in the cold war between their owners, neighbours named Montague and Capulet. Though they meet cute, […]
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The collapse of The Company Men
Like Up In the Air, John Wells’ film aims to dramatize the destructive effects of the late-aughts recession on the American soul. That soul is represented here by Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones, three generations of men who’ve become ludicrously wealthy as executives at a ship-building company. When the global economy sinks, […]
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Something’s missing in Unknown
Liam Neeson is a towering presence in Jaume Collet-Serra’s thriller, stalking and scowling around to impressive, if occasionally ridiculous, effect. Neeson plays a biotech expert headed to a conference in Berlin when a car accident leaves him in a coma. When he awakes, his wife (January Jones) doesn’t recognize him and a posse of murdering […]
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Sanctum‘s easy on the eyes
Executive producer James Cameron’s name is slapped all over it, but credit director Alister Grierson for making this claustrophobic thriller about divers trapped in a flooding cave system so engrossing. Expert explorer Frank (Richard Roxburgh), his emotionally estranged son Josh (Zack Morris clone Rhys Wakefield) and cocky money man Carl (Ioan Gruffud) are the nominal […]
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The Eagle soldiers on
There’s much talk of honour in The Eagle, a movie that puts forward a metal statue and the equally inanimate face of Channing Tatum as symbols of that quality. It’s hard to buy into all that honour talk, though, when many of the characters mouthing it are butchers of children. Tatum plays a soldier who […]
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Big, bad bromance in The Mechanic
Like Charles Bronson, Jason Statham is more of a type than an actor, and no current movie star is more convincing as a lethal badass whose bones and emotional range resemble granite. This makes Statham a logical choice to take over the Bronson role in this remake of the 1972 film about a hitman training […]
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The Roommate is nothing to be afraid of
This update of Single White Female is like a catfight between two declawed kittens – bloodless and not frightening in the least. Minka Kelly is Sara, a fresh-faced fashion student whose transition into university life gets complicated by roommate Rebecca (Leighton Meester), who happens to be majoring in crazy. In Rebecca’s warped mind, BFFs are […]
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No faith in The Rite
Hollywood’s latest demonic possession thriller claims to be both “inspired by true events” and, in one of the most baffling writing credits in film history, “suggested by” author Matt Baglio’s book about said events. Did no one suggest to the inspired filmmakers that their script, truth-y though it may have been, was entirely redundant? Michael […]