Like the charity haunted house at your nearest community centre, Paranormal Activity 3 arrives in time for Halloween with familiar but nevertheless effective scares. A prequel to its two predecessors, the film travels back to 1988 and the childhoods of sisters Kristi and Katie as they are plagued by a sinister apparition. Mom’s boyfriend attempts […]
Cineplex Park Lane
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Sharp blades but dull wit of The Three Musketeers
Once upon a time, we didn’t need CGI to be lured into theatres. It’s now a staple of any action flick, including Paul W.S. Anderson’s (Resident Evil) iteration of Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel. It does a good job pretending it’s part of the Pirates franchise—befuddled plot, sword fights and Orlando Bloom included—only in Louis XIII’s […]
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Atkinson shines as Johnny English Reborn
Rowan Atkinson doesn’t need a gargantuan budget to be funny. (Remember Mr. Bean or the Blackadder series?) Oliver Parker’s Johnny English Reborn, the sequel to Peter Howitt’s 2003 English debut, reinstates English as an MI7 agent after his five-year retreat as a Tibetan monk. His mission: to stop Vortex, a CIA-MI7-KGB assassination trio, from killing […]
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Not The Thing of beauty
The Thing is a prequel to the 1982 horror movie by John Carpenter, yet retains the title and much of the narrative structure of Carpenter’s classic. The film tells the story of a Norwegian research group in Antarctica who uncover a frozen alien with shape shifting abilities, filling in the backstory leading up to the […]
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Footloose cuts loose
Was there even a need to remake Footloose? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean Craig Brewer’s adaptation of the Kevin Bacon classic should be dismissed by fans of the original. Footloose follows the 1984 version closely, keeping the majority of the original plot and script intact, but slight changes update it for modern audiences. The […]
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Sentimentality ruins The Big Year
Pick a hobby—from watching Star Trek to knitting—take it to the extreme, and it’s ripe with comedic potential (think of Christopher Guest’s dog show “mockumentary” Best in Show). But director David Frankel (Marley and Me) gets lost in sentimentality en route to comedy land. Funny guys Owen Wilson, Steve Martin and Jack Black are birders […]
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The Ides of March a powerful political thriller
The Ides of March may be a political thriller co-written by, directed by and starring leading man George Clooney, but hot property Ryan Gosling steals the show in an award-worthy performance. He’s Stephen Myers, an idealistic campaign staffer working on the presidential bid for democratic candidate governor Mike Morris (Clooney). As the campaign trail progresses, […]
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Real heart in Real Steel
Emotions run high in this beautifully rendered sci-fi/sports movie. An ailing grifter, boxer and deadbeat dad, Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) keeps afloat by taking any robot he can scrap together to the ring to knock the block off any other metal head for money. Silly premise aside, this underdog robo-boxing movie shows real heart and […]
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The Guard full of Irish charm
A hard-drinking black comedy, The Guard features Brendan Gleeson patrolling the Irish countryside with a loaded gun and a mind full of profane sarcasm. Director John Michael McDonagh sets his debut feature in the western county of Connemara, where police sergeant Gerry Boyle (Gleeson) finds his sleepy town invaded by a trio of international drug […]
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Young Adult Cancer Canada sponsors 50/50 screening
Young Adult Cancer Canada is offering free tickets to a screening of 50/50, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Seth Rogen dramedy based on screenwriter Will Reiser‘s fight with cancer in his mid-20s. The screening is at Park Lane, 7:10pm on Wednesday, October 5. Survivors can get tickets here: giveorget.ca. The site also allows people to donate money so […]
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50/50 goes halfsies with comedy and pathos
It’s trite, but not inaccurate, to say 50/50 is an even split between comedy and pathos. Based on screenwriter Will Reiser’s real-life cancer battle, the movie sees Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception) as Adam, a young man forced to deal with a drastic diagnosis that renders him a coin-toss away from death. Seth Rogen plays the best […]
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What’s Your Number? Maybe three out of 10, if that
In the year of Bridesmaids, it’s hard not to compare What’s Your Number? to that funnier, better romantic comedy. Anna Faris (The House Bunny) stars in this lacklustre film as a promiscuous woman who sets out to revisit her past boyfriends in a search for true love. This is after a magazine suggests any woman […]
