A couple dozen crew and cast members are nestled into a tiny apartment in Halifax’s north end. Chairs, couches and a computer desk occupy the main area and paintings decorate the walls, with cameras and lights accounting for the rest of the space. Writer-director Michael Ray Fox sits on a chair, prompting the actors with their […]
Molly Segal
Posted inArts + Music
Don’t try Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Director Lasse Hallström’s Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a collage of a movie, devoid of real characters and crippled by awkward dialogue. Maybe it worked in its book incarnation, but in less than two hours on screen it makes no sense that a scientific fisheries researcher, Dr. Jones (Ewan McGregor), would have a spiritual […]
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A few laughs on 21 Jump Street
A self-referential reboot of the 80s television series (1987-1991) starring Johnny Depp, Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s 21 Jump Street has some good, if juvenile, laughs. Schmidt (Jonah Hill), unpopular in high school, and Jenko (Channing Tatum), popular, switch roles when they return to high school as undercover cops trying to bust a drug ring—and […]
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Eddie Murphy needs more than A Thousand Words
Big-shot publisher Jack McCall (Eddie Murphy) makes a questionable choice signing a book deal with a meditation guru, Sinja (Cliff Curtis), and a tree pops up his backyard (literally), shedding its leaves with each word Jack speaks; he is the tree, slowly dying. Of all A Thousand Words’s flaws, this is its loudest; the karmic […]
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We Need to Talk About Kevin, you need to go see him
Director Lynne Ramsay creates a seamlessly claustrophobic account of a mother’s relationship with her disturbed son—an adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s novel so rich in colour and imagery, you wonder how this story could be told through words alone. Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton) gives up her globetrotting life to have a family with Franklin (John C. […]
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Coriolanus “as tedious as a twice-told tale”
When Baz Luhrmann brought Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the big screen in 1996, he modernized the piece with wit and creativity. Ralph Fiennes, an undeniably talented actor (the Bard is his forte), is unable to match Luhrmann’s work as a director with his own screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, a lesser-known play about a […]
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Project X is shit
Project X is barely a movie. The plot: three high school seniors—the gullible birthday boy, Thomas (Thomas Mann), the fat guy, J.B. (Jonathan Daniel Brown), and the obnoxious dude, Costa (Oliver Cooper)—stock up on booze and pot and set out to “get some pussy” by throwing “the party you’ve only dreamed about” when Thomas’s parents […]
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Wanderlust doesn’t go anywhere
Manhattanites George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston), unemployed, flee the city for a commune. The entire movie feels a bit lazy, like director David Wain is relying on star power (Rudd and Aniston) and his past hits, Role Models (2008) and Wet Hot American Summer (2011) (both of which Rudd was in), instead of […]
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This Means War tepid and disappointing
The story of one woman, Lauren (Reese Witherspoon), dating two CIA agents (Tom Hardy and Chris Pine) could be forward-thinking, and yet director McG and a team of male screenwriters came up with something not only banal, but mildly insulting in its use of what-women-want stereotypes. (No, visiting your boyfriend’s extended family is not lady […]
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Safe House, cheap entertainment
Director Daniel Espinosa’s Safe House doesn’t tread into new territory, but uses tricks of the spy-movie trade, with claustrophobic chase scenes, shaky close-ups, and badass shoot-outs to boot. When the CIA safe house in Cape Town, South Africa, is breached, rookie Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is in charge of fugitive agent Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), […]
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Albert Nobbs underdeveloped
It’s interesting to look at sexuality and sexual identity in a time and place—Ireland in the 1800s— when there was only one norm. Albert Nobbs tackles the subject, but too superficially. Albert (Glenn Close), a woman who lives life as a man, works in a swanky hotel, squirreling money away to eventually buy a shop. […]
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Man on a Ledge falls hard
It’s not promising when a movie uses showy plotting as a crutch, as director Asger Leth does in Man on a Ledge. Escaped convict Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) is on the window ledge of a downtown Manhattan hotel to prove his innocence. We’re completely in the dark at first: the movie starts with Nick prepping […]
