With the Atlantic Film Festival launching its eight-day marathon of 200-odd movies Thursday night, you will already have a sense of a few of the hyped offerings. There are the Atlantic gems, Weirdos, Maudie and Werewolf (see accompanying story), the international pictures beloved of European festival-goers Julieta and I, Daniel Blake, and Kristen Stewart continuing […]
Cineplex Park Lane
Posted inArts + Music
AFF Reviews: The Lobster, Room
Movie reviewers everywhere are loving The Lobster, the first English-language film by Greek director, Yorgos Lanthimos. The absurdist comedic satire is set in a UK near-dystopia where it’s illegal to be single. So when David (Colin Farrell) gets dumped, he’s immediately transferred to this freak-show singles hotel where he has 45 days to find a mate or […]
Posted inArts + Music
AFF Reviews: Bound, Undone, The Stanford Prison Experiment
This weekend, several selections at the 35th Atlantic Film Festival explored human psychology through various narrative styles. On Friday, I rolled into the Lord Nelson Hotel at 1:30am to catch 1980 sci-fi musical, The Apple, which was one of the best worst movies I’ve ever seen, a terribly awesome, tacky romp through the exploitative music […]
Posted inArts + Music
Money Talks: local features at the Atlantic Film Fest
Tonight, the 35th Atlantic Film Festival kicks off with the premiere of Hyena Road, the new Paul Gross–Allan Hawco joint about Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan (7pm, Rebecca Cohn). There are a number of internationally acclaimed films and shorts screening in the next eight days, but there are also great batch of Atlantic-made features that show just how skilled […]
Posted inArts + Music
Indie Game: The Movie to screen in Halifax
The Canadian premiere of Indie Game: The Movie will be simulcast live nationwide from the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto at 10pm (AST), Thursday, May 3. You can go see it at Empire Park Lane that night. The documentary is a Canadian-made—directed by James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot—crowed-funded film about video game developers who, […]
Posted inArts + Music
NSCAD film students screen their year’s work
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design film students will have the chance to share their cinematic creations in a series of public film screenings on Thursday, April 19 at the Empire 8 Park Lane Theatre (5657 Spring Garden Road, 423-4860) at 7pm. Don’t feel like watching movies in which crazed teenagers find inventive ways […]
Posted inBest of Halifax
Best Movie Theatre
Gold Winner Oxford Theatre Silver Winner Empire Dartmouth Crossing Bronze Winner Empire Park Lane A great theatre means lots of different things to lots of different people. Dark enough to make out in undetected? Quiet and respectful attendees, with limited annoying texters? Tasty popcorn? Romantic atmosphere? The Oxford Theatre—“One of the last great venues for […]
Posted inArts + Music
A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas is a gift to fans
For Harold and Kumar fans, this is a welcome third installment, written by the same duo as the first two movies, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg. TV director Todd Strauss-Schulson (new to the franchise) didn’t have to use 3D, but puts it to good use with self-conscious cheekiness: smoke rings swirl in the air and […]
Posted inArts + Music
Tower Heist a limp caper
(image-1) A big-budget, mindless blockbuster entertainment, Brett Ratner’s (Rush Hour, The Red Dragon) Tower Heist doesn’t quite hit the mark. When businessman Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) defrauds the employees of the swanky high-rise he calls home, ex-building manager Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) leads a robbery of Shaw’s apartment with the aid of a team of […]
Posted inArts + Music
In Time a waste
Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, The Truman Show) brings another clever idea to the screen with a future-world where people’s bodies stop aging at 25 and time literally is money, but doesn’t execute well enough to make the most of it. Justin Timberlake plays a poor worker who’s given an extra century by a suicidal old dude […]
Posted inArts + Music
Puss in Boots is feline fun
The badass Puss (Antonio Banderas) of Shrek 2 is back as a leading feline: an outlaw seeking to clear his name. We’re privy to Puss’ backstory when Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) reappears—they were “brothers” in a Spanish orphanage. They pursue the magic beans (a dream they’ve shared since childhood), which they must steal from a […]
Posted inArts + Music
The Rum Diary a hot mess
It’s 1960 and Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) has just arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Going to work at a failing local newspaper staffed by layabouts and alcoholics, Kemp writes horoscopes and stories about tourists bowling, but also sees the dichotomy on the island, the impoverished locals being screwed by American hotel owners and land-grabbers. […]
