I thought, ‘It must be just as easy to make a feature. It’s just a longer short film.’” Six years ago, this little nugget of hubris sparked filmmaker Sean Grady to get started on Operation Mongoose, a mockumentary about a wannabe bounty-hunter whose escalating delusions make him a tragicomic figure. Grady, who had made it […]
Matt Semansky
Posted inArts + Music
Disney neuters African Cats
Live, powerful carnivores filmed in their natural environment should be a can’t-miss premise, yet Disney somehow manages to fumble African Cats. The stars of the show are two families, one headed up by a single cheetah mom and the other a pride of lions under threat from a rival gang. Samuel L. Jackson’s overwritten narration […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Mike Savage and Robert Chisholm face off
The Dartmouth-Cole Harbour riding is the site of one of the federal election’s true heavyweight bouts, with incumbent Liberal Mike Savage looking to fend off a challenge from the NDP’s Robert Chisholm. Both bring significant star power to the competition. Savage has served in Parliament since 2004, is currently vice-chair of the standing committee on […]
Posted inArts + Music
Rio grates, sags
As befits an animated film set in Rio De Janeiro during Carnavale, Rio is a throbbing combination of rhythm and colour. The samba beats and tie-dyed palette comes in the service of a story about a nerdy blue macaw (Jesse Eisenberg) who’s yanked from domesticated life in Minnesota and brought to Brazil to mate with […]
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Win Win indie gold
The director of The Station Agent and The Visitor, Thomas McCarthy, strikes indie gold again with this warm comedy-drama about a struggling lawyer who brings a runaway teen into his family and onto his high school wrestling team. Attorney and grappling coach Mike (Paul Giamatti) sees an opportunity to pocket some extra cash when he […]
Posted inArts + Music
Arthur a worthy diversion
Though it originally belonged to an actor who was a decade older and a foot smaller, the role of Arthur Bach is a custom fit for Russell Brand. The comedian steps into the late Dudley Moore’s shoes as a drunken, irresponsible heir to a family fortune who’s leveraged into a loveless marriage just as genuine […]
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Code breaker
Sci-fi helmer Duncan Jones confirms his status as a fantasy auteur with his time-twisting feature Source Code. Matt Semansky spends a little more than eight minutes with the director. “My dad used to insist that I spend an hour or two a night reading,” recalls Duncan Jones. “Sci-fi was kind of my candy, my go-to […]
Posted inArts + Music
Heavy-handed Soul Surfer
Footage that runs during the credits show the real-life Bethany Hamilton as a devout Christian, so it’s probably not fair to hold this movie’s bible-camp undercurrent against it. But I’ll do it anyway. As Hamilton, a competitive surfer who loses her arm to a shark but gets back up on the waves thanks to her […]
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Your Highness “tepid and lazy”
There was reason to believe that director David Gordon Green and writer-actor Danny McBride, who collaborated to varying degrees on Pineapple Express and Eastbound and Down, could make some comedic hay with this quest-movie parody. Instead, they’ve produced a tepid and lazy film, wasting their own talents and those of a strong cast. McBride plays […]
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Blood-chilling Insidious
Saw director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell ditch the blood spilling and go for blood-chilling with *Insidious*, the most thoroughly terrifying film since its influential ancestor Paranormal Activity. After an accident in his new home, little Dalton (Ty Simpkins) goes into a mysterious coma, a development that coincides with much supernatural weirdness. His parents […]
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Source Code executes
Duncan Jones follows up his Kubrick-cool debut Moon with an earthbound piece of sci-fi, one starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a soldier continually re-living the eight minutes leading up to a train bombing. While trying to figure out the identity of the bomber, Gyllenhaal’s Colter Stevens also tries to figure out how his superiors (Vera Farmiga […]
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Hobo With A Shotgun hits its target
For most movies, adjectives like cheesy, offensive and tasteless carry a negative connotation. But this movie is called Hobo with a Shotgun, for fuck’s sake, so it’d be a shame if these descriptions didn’t apply. No worries there. Dartmouth director Jason Eisener’s first feature is a blood-soaked and kinetic exploitation masterpiece, an abattoir for cinema’s […]