Killer Elite is a jet-set action thriller about an ex-military operative named Danny (Jason Statham) who must rescue his mentor (Robert DeNiro) by uncovering the truth behind a series of assassinations commissioned by the British government. Not to be confused with the mostly terrible James Caan film by the same name, Killer Elite is a […]
Empire 17 Cinemas Bayers Lake
Posted inArts + Music
Moneyball hits for the cycle
Moneyball is an inside-baseball movie about the inside of baseball—there is precious little sports footage; it’s about team-building from statistical and budgetary perspectives, which is a hard sell. Luckily it’s got a terrific Brad Pitt at the centre. Pitt is Billy Beane, the spirited general manager of the worst team in baseball in 2001, the […]
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Empire Theatres have trouble with their screenings
We here at The Coast love movies, and the we presume the good people at the local branch of the national cinema chain Empire Theatres do too, or why would they be in the business of offering them for our enjoyment? They have a monopoly on first run cinemas in Halifax, so they must really […]
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The Devil’s Double delivers
In The Devil’s Double, Dominic Cooper (Band of Brothers, An Education) stars as Latif Yahia, an Iraqi soldier chosen to become the body double for Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday Hussein, during the Gulf War. Cooper does a fantastic job portraying the life of Yahia as he is forced to become property of the Iraqi dictator, […]
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Get behind the wheel and Drive
Fans of Ryan Gosling who grew up watching him in Breaker High and The Notebook, be warned. In the eight years since starring in the Nicholas Sparks blockbuster, he has become a man with increasing levels of badass-ness. This is evident in Drive, a hyper-violent and visually stunning picture that has Gosling playing the role […]
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I Don’t Know How She Does It is dull and unfunny
Sarah Jessica Parker’s new movie, I Don’t Know How She Does It, is a comedy that fails to deliver any laughs. Parker plays Kate Reddy, a mother of two who works during the day as a financial analyst. As a project emerges involving the creation of a new retirement savings plan, Parker must decide between […]
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Straw Dogs‘ thrills hit above average
Rod Lurie’s remake of the 1971 Sam Peckinpah thriller makes up for the opacity of its meaning with the assured execution of its tension-and-release formula. James Marsden and Kate Bosworth star as David and Amy, an effete LA screenwriter and his actor wife, who move out to her tiny Mississippi hometown. David’s threatened by the […]
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The Devil’s Double delay
When Coast reviewer Matthew Ritchie headed out to Bayers Lake this afternoon to see the new film The Devil’s Double, the film never started. Empire Bayers Lake employees informed him that it could take until Monday for the problem to be fixed. So, unless they move The Devil’s Double into another cinema, if you were […]
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Bucky Larson: Born To Be a Star is blindingly awful
While jerking off with a few friends to a vintage skin flick that turns out to star his parents, a buck-toothed, poorly-endowed hick with Anton Chigurh hair (Nick Swardson) is inspired to go to Los Angeles and get into the porn business. I am hardly patting myself on the back when I say that the […]
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Warrior cuts emotional chord, cheese
Warrior feels like a glorified commercial for Tapout. But like all good commercials, Warrior strikes an emotional chord, even if elements verge on a Bloodsport level of cheesiness. Two estranged brothers (Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy) are brought back into the world of mixed martial arts when a multi-million dollars championship (surprisingly, hosted by Tapout) is […]
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Contagion both creepy and remote
Steven Soderbergh’s thriller about a killer virus that spreads death, terror and chaos around the world is chilling in more ways than one. It elicits a spinal shiver, to be sure, to contemplate the fragility of both human bodies and societal structures, and Soderbergh’s economical, frill-free approach to the story makes the escalating panic feel […]
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The Debt pays off
John Madden’s remake of a 2007 Israeli film Ha-Hov about three Mossad agents who botch the kidnapping of a German war criminal is a case study in thriller construction. We meet the agents (Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds) in the late-90s, 30 years after their high-risk mission to lift a vicious doctor (Jesper […]