In Dream House, Daniel Craig plays Will Atenton, a retired book publisher who moves with his family to an idyllic suburb. But during renovations, Craig and his wife (Rachel Weisz) discover that their home was the location of a grizzly homicide five years earlier, which, as his reality begins to unwind, Atenton suspects he may […]
Empire Studio 7 Lower Sackville
Posted inArts + Music
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 […]
Posted inArts + Music
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 […]
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 […]
Posted inArts + Music
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 […]
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 […]
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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 […]
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
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 […]
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
Not much bite to Shark Night 3D
Released at the tail end of the summer, Shark Night 3D tries to capture the popularity of last year’s aquatic-horror comedy Piranha 3D, but fails due to cheap special effects and a lack of humour. The plot is simple enough: A group of university students go to an island cottage on a Louisiana lake, but […]
