Just before the glut of summer moviedom comes a movie for grown-ups. Neither franchise entry nor reboot nor app-turned-feature, Money Monster is an old-fashioned Hollywood thriller starring a pair of vets—Julia Roberts and George Clooney—directed by another, Jodie Foster. Clooney is Lee Gates, a roguish asshole who hosts a gimmicky show called Money Monster, in which he fast talks and […]
Drama
Posted inArts + Music
Review: The Boy and the Beast
In The Boy and the Beast, a young runaway, Ren, stumbles from regular old humanity into a beast world, where he becomes the apprentice to a cranky bear-like master named Kumatetsu. They are, suffice to say, an odd couple. Many physical and emotional battles to be waged across two hours. Director Mamoru Hosoda is the heir apparent to Miyazaki, perhaps […]
Posted inArts + Music
Review: The Lobster
What if being single was a crime? A dystopic future of marrieds is the world posited by The Lobster, but that’s just the logline. Here’s what actually goes on: There’s a place where eligible singles gather. They have 45 days to find a mate—hetero, natch—and if they fail they’re turned into an animal of their […]
Posted inArts + Music
Review: Miles Ahead
Don Cheadle takes the often-staid musician’s biopic and turns it on its head with Miles Ahead, a presumed account of Miles Davis’ life somewhere between 1975 and 1980, when he was hiding out in his New York mansion, high on cocaine and playing not a note. When Rolling Stone reporter David Braden (Ewan McGregor) shows up with the aim […]
Posted inArts + Music
Review: Demolition
Quebecois director Jean-Marc Vallée continues his steady march into Hollywood—you have him to blame for Matthew McConaughey’s Oscar—following up Wild and Dallas Buyers Club with the Jake Gyllenhaal-starrer Demolition. Gyllenhaal, who’s made two films with Vallée’s fellow ascendant Francophone, Denis Villeneuve, stars as Davis, an investment banker whose wife dies in a car accident. A hospital vending-machine incident inspires Davis to write […]
Posted inArts + Music
Review: Eye in the Sky
The actor-writer-director Gavin Hood follows up the mostly computer-generated Ender’s Game—about a boy training to fight intergalactic war through a simulator that turned out to be real—with a similar but much more realistic battle pitched across nations in Eye in the Sky. Colonel Katherine Powell is played by Helen Mirren—a terrific, welcome force to have in a typically manly environment […]
Posted inArts + Music
Review: Born To Be Blue
This Very Canadian Biopic stars Ethan Hawke as Chet Baker, who in the ’60s was womped by his drug dealer’s goons and had all his teeth knocked out. Teeth are pretty important to a trumpet player! Writer director Robert Budreau does the smart biopic take—instead of trying for a life overview, he covers a specific era, during which Baker is […]
Posted inArts + Music
Review: The Bronze
Melissa Rauch, The Other Girl from The Big Bang Theory—“Not Kaley Cuoco, not Blossom, the other girl!” has crafted herself a terrific lead role in Hope Ann Greggory, a foul-mouthed, emotionally stunted former Olympic gymnast. Still living at home with her postal worker father (the great character actor Gary Cole, from Veep and The Good Wife), Hope is half-coasting through […]
Posted inArts + Music
Review: The Little Prince
This terrific adaptation of the beloved children’s book for adults features a passel of Hollywood voices, but they’re beside the point. When a little girl (Mackenzie Foy), overworked by her uptight single mother (Rachel McAdams), meets a kooky neighbour (Jeff Bridges) who tells her of his adventures with the Little Prince—a boy born on an asteroid searching the universe for […]
Posted inBest of Halifax
Best Effort to Keep it Real
Here’s a story about how even when things don’t quite work out, a lot of good can come of powerful intent. Lee-Anne Poole used to be the event coordinator for Halifax Pride and she worked for filmmaker Thom Fitzgerald as a festival producer and in administrative postions. In theatre she’s studied and taught at Neptune […]
