The Fault in Our Stars, based on the wildly successful novel that is so adept at existing it had a perfectly timed placement in the new season of Orange is the New Black last weekend, is a maddening melodrama in the Sad Teen Death Movie genre. Hazel (Shailene Woodley) has terminal cancer. Gus (Ansel Elgort) […]
Tara Thorne
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Maleficent
Pick a superhero or a villain and his motivation for becoming either can most often be drawn back to a dead parent(s). Avenging, revenging, honouring, all that crap—it’s about something being cruelly taken from you, wondering why and coming to terms with it your own way. In Maleficent, the origin story of Sleeping Beauty’s evil […]
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Fading Gigolo
Here is a list of terrible things about this movie: 1. Woody Allen plays a pimp. 2. Sofia Vergara. 3. Sharon Stone, still beautiful, needing to a. hire a gigolo while b. wondering aloud if she’ll get AIDS. 4. A visual palette of cigarette-stain yellow. 5. A subplot about Hasidic Jews that is supposed to […]
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Sharon Van Etten
One of America’s most adept heart-stompers comes roaring back after the success of 2012’s Tramp with an even bigger, braver artistic achievement in Are We There (that lack of punctuation is no accident). Presented as 11 pieces of a doomed relationship Van Etten can’t sort out for the life of her—look at the titles: “I […]
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Under the Skin
Most directors since Ghost World have just pointed their cameras at Scarlett Johansson and let her butt do the rest—especially, disappointingly, Sofia Coppola; especially, unsurprisingly, Woody Allen—an apex you’d think was reached with Black Widow’s catsuit, but has Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) got a challenge for you. In a script so wordless it makes Gravity […]
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X-Men Days of Future Past
Nobody worries about the space-time continuum in X-Men: Days of Future Past, in which Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) goes back to the ’70s to stop Raven (Jennifer Lawrence, playing one awful note) from killing a scientist (Peter Dinklage), thus creating super-robots who roll up in coffins to kill everyone now. Kitty (Ellen Page) does some reiki […]
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The Grand Seduction
Tim Riggins Goes A-Doctorin’, B’ys, in this folksy adaptation of the decade-old French film by Jean-François Pouliot. Directed by Don McKellar (confusing), this Seduction stars Taylor Kitsch as a Toronto doctor (the hotshot is implied) who is tricked into spending a month in the depressed Newfoundland town of Tickle Head. If he agrees to stay, […]
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Lisa Lipton’s ticket to paradise
Lisa Lipton works with many moving parts. There’s her drumming practice, developing since 2011 and showcased as the marquee exhibit BLAST BEATS at Nocturne 2012. There’s the film she’s making, The Impossible Blue Rose, which she’s been writing, filming and assembling on the road from California to Windsor, Ontario. Unlike most features, which are unveiled […]
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You must listen to Surveillance
Tri Le is hitting two firsts this season–graduating from college and playing OBEY. The two go hand-in-hand: as a recording arts student at NSCC, the former bedroom recorder had new techniques to put to work on pop-punk trio. Surveillance’s month-old EP Stressed and Depressed. “I learned there’s a proper way to do things, there’s no […]
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White Poppy has robotics, will travel
Like fellow OBEY act Julianna Barwick, Crystal Dorval (AKA White Poppy) trades in ethereal layers, guitars and vocals piled atop one another, emotional and cathartic, best heard in headphones or churches. The difference is Dorval records everything by herself–she’s her own writer-editor. “I remember someone telling me something about painting once–a painting can technically continue […]
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Each Other: Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey
First there was York Redoubt. Then there was Long Long Long. And now there is Each Other. When Brad Loughead and Mike Wright moved to Montreal in 2011, they teamed up with ex-Burdock Christian Simmons, another Haligonian, and formed the dream-space trio. After a string of EPs, and discarded digital versions, Each Other is two […]
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TV Freaks: Short and sweet
The Hamilton punk quartet TV Freaks is named after a song by Australian band The Victims, but “I do like TV,” says bassist Kevin Bell. “Me and my girlfriend have been watching Kitchen Nightmares. It’s a staged-reality kinda thing to to watch. You don’t have to think about much to watch it. Kinda like our […]