A heavily mediocre spy thriller, Abduction finds Taylor Lautner (The Twilight Saga) essentially playing Jason Bourne Jr. When seemingly normal high school student Nathan (Lautner) discovers his face on a missing persons website, it triggers an improbable manhunt from both government and criminal forces. Director John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood) slums his way through […]
Empire 17 Cinemas Bayers Lake
Posted inArts + Music
Dolphin Tale a winning sea mammal movie
It’s true what they say; Morgan Freeman really does show up in everything, even aquatic children’s films about wounded dolphins. Filling the void left by ‘90s classic Free Willy, Dolphin Tale is a film based on the true story of a dolphin named Winter who, after being injured in a fisherman’s trap and subsequently undergoing […]
Posted inArts + Music
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 […]
Posted inArts + Music
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, […]
Posted inArts + Music
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 […]
Posted inArts + Music
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 […]
Posted inArts + Music
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 […]
Posted inArts + Music
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 […]
Posted inArts + Music
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 […]
Posted inArts + Music
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 […]
Posted inArts + Music
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 […]
Posted inArts + Music
Apollo 18 dull faux-doc
The faux-documentary horror film has become its own subgenre, and familiarity with this particular storytelling conceit is starting to breed fatigue, if not contempt. Apollo 18 brings the Blairanormal Clovertivity into space, using footage supposedly taken from NASA’s archives and depicting a secret 1974 lunar voyage gone wrong. Three astronauts (Lloyd Owen, Ryan Robbins and […]