For reasons unbeknownst to me, director Frank Coraci and a slew of writers birthed Zookeeper. Dumped by his bombshell GF (Leslie Bibb), zookeeper Griffin (Kevin James) schemes to win her back half a decade later with the help of the chatty animals he cares for and his sexy colleague (Rosario Dawson), who harbours a crush […]
Empire 17 Cinemas Bayers Lake
Posted inArts + Music
Larry Crowne sweet, schmaltzy
Larry Crowne is very cute and very slight. Director Tom Hanks is also the titular Crowne, one of his typically effervescent-but-naive characters, a wageslave at the local big box suddenly downsized. His neighbour clues him into the possibility of adult education, so off he goes to community college, where the decades-younger students welcome him as […]
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Monte Carlo not worth the gamble
This female buddy flick with elements of chaste rom-com and coming-of-age conventions teeters to the edge of decent escapist entertainment but doesn’t quite make it over. Teen queen Selena Gomez stars as Grace, a recent high school grad from Texas who’s been saving the money from her waitressing job for a trip to Paris with […]
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Transformers 3 fails to excite
Mega-budget schlock director Michael Bay re-imagines the space race and historic moon landing not as products of a Cold War pissing contest, but rather a military mission to investigate the crash landing of an alien ship. That’s the lone decent idea in this otherwise formulaic and tedious sequel, which once again finds the good-guy extraterrestrial […]
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Reviewer unmoved by Cars 2
Pixar’s run of quality animated movies is stellar, with the first Cars the exception proving the rule: It looked good, but was hollow as a wheel-well. The sequel exists only because the merch haul of the first one was so large, and somehow it manages to be slicker, more action-packed, and even less moving. Its […]
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Bad Teacher barely passes
Jake Kasdan’s comedy is a series of disjointed gags and one-liners without a satisfying through-line, intermittently amusing but ultimately unsatisfying. Cameron Diaz plays the unprofessional educator, Elizabeth, whose teaching repertoire consists of R-rated movies and whose life ambition amounts to finding a sugar daddy. Spotting a candidate for that role in a wealthy colleague (Justin […]
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Not much to The Art of Getting By
Gavin Wiesen’s drama about a slacker teen exhibits the opposite flaw as its main character. Whereas high school senior George (Freddy Highmore) is a baby-faced deer who sees life as a series of paralysis-inducing headlights, the film itself is far too confident in its studied indie-ness. George is outfitted with an oversized overcoat, a family […]
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Perfunctory Mr Popper’s Penguins
Jim Carrey does his best impression of a manic businessman turned penguin-hoarder for an hour and a half. Mike Waters (Ghosts of Girlfriends Past) alters a classic children’s novel beyond recognition: As Mr. Popper, Carrey winterizes his swanky Manhattan apartment for Antarctic waterfowl bequeathed to him by his absentee father, attempts to reignite a broken-up […]
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Green Lantern provides comic relief
It’s hard to take this shade of green seriously. Martin Campbell’s (Casino Royale) adaptation of the DC comic establishes the universal battle between the yellow power of “fear” and the green power of “will.” Unfortunately, this “info-dump” happens twice: first for the audience, then again for pilot turned superhero Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds). We get […]
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Vegetarianism doc Forks Over Knives persuasive
An infomercial for the whole grain, plant-based diet, Lee Fulkerson’s documentary plugs it as the solution to America’s degenerative diseases, including cancer, heart disease and diabetes. For all its evidence to support this miracle cure —from large-scale studies, to personal examples, to disturbing statistics—a few loose ends remain. Fish isn’t discussed save for in passing, […]
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Cell 213 dull like solitary confinement
Part psychological thriller, part religious horror and part Shawshank Redemption redux, Cell 213 is a wholly amateurish effort that’s neither thoughtful or frightening. Eric Balfour stars as unscrupulous lawyer Michael Grey, who’s falsely convicted of the murder of a mentally unstable client and gets locked away in the very same cell that housed his alleged […]
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Super 8 scratches summer movie itch
Just when you thought we’d gone digital for good, J.J. Abrams (Star Trek) brings Kodak back with a bang. The extraterrestrial mystery unfurls when a pack of preteens shooting a movie —on super 8 film, duh— witnesses an explosive train accident leaving behind countless little “white Rubik’s cubes,” misbehaving electronics and prompts clandestine Air Force […]