For Harold and Kumar fans, this is a welcome third installment, written by the same duo as the first two movies, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg. TV director Todd Strauss-Schulson (new to the franchise) didn’t have to use 3D, but puts it to good use with self-conscious cheekiness: smoke rings swirl in the air and […]
Empire Studio 7 Lower Sackville
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Tower Heist a limp caper
(image-1) A big-budget, mindless blockbuster entertainment, Brett Ratner’s (Rush Hour, The Red Dragon) Tower Heist doesn’t quite hit the mark. When businessman Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) defrauds the employees of the swanky high-rise he calls home, ex-building manager Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) leads a robbery of Shaw’s apartment with the aid of a team of […]
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In Time a waste
Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, The Truman Show) brings another clever idea to the screen with a future-world where people’s bodies stop aging at 25 and time literally is money, but doesn’t execute well enough to make the most of it. Justin Timberlake plays a poor worker who’s given an extra century by a suicidal old dude […]
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Puss in Boots is feline fun
The badass Puss (Antonio Banderas) of Shrek 2 is back as a leading feline: an outlaw seeking to clear his name. We’re privy to Puss’ backstory when Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) reappears—they were “brothers” in a Spanish orphanage. They pursue the magic beans (a dream they’ve shared since childhood), which they must steal from a […]
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Paranormal Activity 3 familiar but scarily effective
Like the charity haunted house at your nearest community centre, Paranormal Activity 3 arrives in time for Halloween with familiar but nevertheless effective scares. A prequel to its two predecessors, the film travels back to 1988 and the childhoods of sisters Kristi and Katie as they are plagued by a sinister apparition. Mom’s boyfriend attempts […]
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Sharp blades but dull wit of The Three Musketeers
Once upon a time, we didn’t need CGI to be lured into theatres. It’s now a staple of any action flick, including Paul W.S. Anderson’s (Resident Evil) iteration of Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel. It does a good job pretending it’s part of the Pirates franchise—befuddled plot, sword fights and Orlando Bloom included—only in Louis XIII’s […]
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Atkinson shines as Johnny English Reborn
Rowan Atkinson doesn’t need a gargantuan budget to be funny. (Remember Mr. Bean or the Blackadder series?) Oliver Parker’s Johnny English Reborn, the sequel to Peter Howitt’s 2003 English debut, reinstates English as an MI7 agent after his five-year retreat as a Tibetan monk. His mission: to stop Vortex, a CIA-MI7-KGB assassination trio, from killing […]
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Not The Thing of beauty
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 […]
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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 […]