While some CGI animated features are good for all ages, Escape from Planet Earth is better left for those stuck chaperoning a more junior audience. On an alien planet, popular astronaut Scorch Supernova (Brendan Fraser) sets out on a dangerous mission to Earth, AKA the “Dark Planet,” against his nerdy brother Gary’s (Rob Corddry) wishes. […]
Molly Segal
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Amour
Michael Haneke’s (The White Ribbon, Caché) latest film tackles aging and love—the harsh fate that can befall anyone after eight or so decades on this planet, and bearing witness to this happening to your spouse. We encounter Anne and Georges (Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant) at the beginning of Anne’s decline. While Haneke suggests they’ve […]
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A Good Day to Die Hard
Die Hard turns 25 years old with its fifth installment, and Bruce Willis is still at the centre of the action as John McClane. This time, he’s in Russia helping his estranged CIA agent son, Jack (Jai Courtney), keep nuclear weapons away from some bad guys. A Good Day to Die Hard doesn’t even attempt […]
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Identity Thief
If you’ve seen the preview for Identity Thief, you’ve seen enough. Seth Gordon’s (Horrible Bosses) latest comedy is a flop about a con artist (Melissa McCarthy), whose latest victim is a middle-class family man (Jason Bateman). The plot and subplots are over-the-top and don’t carry themselves far—Bateman schlepping it out to Florida from Colorado in […]
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Movie 43
Movie 43 is a series of short segments, all connected under the guise of a gross-out comedy. Ultimately, it’s really just a lousy movie. Its ensemble cast, including Halle Berry, Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman and Naomi Watts, to name only a few, makes it seem more promising than it is. The one exception is Veronica, […]
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Rust and Bone
Rust and Bone is the story of a friendship between Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard), a killer whale trainer, and Alain (Matthias Schoenaerts), a security guard-turned-street fighter, who grow close after the former loses part of her legs in a workplace mishap. A French film directed by Jacques Audiard (A Prophet), Rust and Bone is based on […]
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Broken City
Broken City feels like watching a noir-ish cop drama, with plenty of ’80s synth soundtrack and darkly lit streets. Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg), a private investigator and ex-cop in New York, gets involved in the mayor’s (Russel Crowe) shady scheme of property development, murder and lies leading up to a municipal election, when he agrees […]
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Zero Dark Thirty
Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) tells the story of the post-9/11 manhunt and killing of Osama bin Laden in a compelling way. Maya (Jessica Chastain), the young, gifted CIA agent tasked with tracking down bin Laden, begins her journey in the Middle East shortly after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in Manhattan. […]
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The Impossible
The Impossible, directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, follows Maria (Naomi Watts), Henry (Ewan McGregor) and their three sons as they arrive at a Thailand resort in time for Christmas 2004, just as the disastrous tsunami hit. This isn’t a movie about the larger effects of the tsunami, but a very insular tale about beating the […]
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Django Unchained
The story of two bounty hunters, an ex-slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) and the German Dr. Schultz (Christoph Waltz), Django Unchained is not for those with weak stomachs. In classic Quentin Tarantino fashion, Django marries heavy gore with his encyclopedic cinematic knowledge—in this case, of Spaghetti Westerns. A search for Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), […]
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This is 40
Judd Apatow strays too far into sentimentality in This is 40, a comedy about entering your forties married with two kids. Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann, Apatow’s wife—characters from Apatow’s last feature, Knocked Up—are hitting a midlife crisis, questioning their relationship, stressing over their kids, Sadie and Charlotte (Maude and Iris Apatow) and […]
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Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away
Cirque du Soleil is a spectacle that doesn’t quite translate to the big screen. Worlds Away, directed by Andrew Adamson and produced by James Cameron, tells the story of a girl who falls for an aerialist—before they can be together, they venture through an odyssey of circus worlds. Cirque du Soleil is impressive, stretching the […]