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 […]
Empire 8 Park Lane
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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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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 […]
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Here’s Killer Elite, action junkies
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 […]
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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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Cave of Forgotten Dreams helps us remember
The idea of Werner Herzog making a 3-D movie might seem strange, but the prolific German filmmaker’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams is anything but a gimmick. Given extremely limited access inside France’s Chauvet Cave, Herzog and his tiny crew document the site’s famous, 30,000 year old cave paintings. The 3-D effects bring an astonishing realism […]
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Mediocre Abduction
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 […]