The sequel to Hoodwinked is a fairytale mishmash, spy-noir-western with too many characters to make it a compelling story. At “Sister Hood” training camp, Red (Hayden Panettiere) and the Sisters discover their chocolate truffle recipe (that makes its eater unstoppable) is missing. The Happily Ever After Agency dispatches Red and a “not so Big Bad […]
Empire Studio 7 Lower Sackville
Posted inArts + Music
Fast Five dumb, fun
The fifth installment of the cars-go-vroom series takes the action to Rio de Janeiro, where the gang led by Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster try to pull off One Last Job. That job involves making off with a crime kingpin’s millions while evading his militia and a U.S. agent (Dwayne Johnson) determined to […]
Posted inArts + Music
You don’t have to go to Prom
A narrator offers these wise words: “High school, it happens to everyone.” Fortunately, Joe Nussbaum’s Prom doesn’t have to happen to everyone. When the Starry Night Prom set accidentally gets burned to a crisp, the school principal assigns badass Jesse Richter (Thomas McDonell) to help the ambitious Nova Prescott (Aimee Teegarden) rebuild it in three […]
Posted inArts + Music
Elephant the best thing in Water for Elephants
A melodramatic plot, an overdone soundtrack and countless montages make Francis Lawrence’s (I Am Legend) adaptation of Sara Gruen’s Depression-era novel (screenplay by Richard LaGravenese) a two-hour slog. Water for Elephants is told as a flashback in which a geriatric Jacob (Hal Holbrook) recounts his life story: young Jacob’s (Robert Pattinson) parents die the day […]
Posted inArts + Music
Bloody, funny Scream 4
Rule number one: there are no rules in the latest Scream installment. A Facebook-savvy murderer reenacts the serial stabbings of the first Ghostface Killer when Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns to Woodsboro as a bestselling author. Updating the cultural allusions, director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson round up the original Scream team in this nostalgic comedy/horror movie. It’s right at home with the trilogy, despite the lapse of a decade—horror movie references and disemboweled bodies to boot. And where it lacks the low-budget kitsch of the original, it lives up to the humour of its predecessors. But the “self-aware post-modern meta shit,” to quote the movie, finally becomes overbearing—the joke runs thin when explained too many times. –Molly Segal
Posted inArts + Music
Rio grates, sags
As befits an animated film set in Rio De Janeiro during Carnavale, Rio is a throbbing combination of rhythm and colour. The samba beats and tie-dyed palette comes in the service of a story about a nerdy blue macaw (Jesse Eisenberg) who’s yanked from domesticated life in Minnesota and brought to Brazil to mate with […]
Posted inArts + Music
Arthur a worthy diversion
Though it originally belonged to an actor who was a decade older and a foot smaller, the role of Arthur Bach is a custom fit for Russell Brand. The comedian steps into the late Dudley Moore’s shoes as a drunken, irresponsible heir to a family fortune who’s leveraged into a loveless marriage just as genuine […]
Posted inArts + Music
Heavy-handed Soul Surfer
Footage that runs during the credits show the real-life Bethany Hamilton as a devout Christian, so it’s probably not fair to hold this movie’s bible-camp undercurrent against it. But I’ll do it anyway. As Hamilton, a competitive surfer who loses her arm to a shark but gets back up on the waves thanks to her […]
Posted inArts + Music
Your Highness “tepid and lazy”
There was reason to believe that director David Gordon Green and writer-actor Danny McBride, who collaborated to varying degrees on Pineapple Express and Eastbound and Down, could make some comedic hay with this quest-movie parody. Instead, they’ve produced a tepid and lazy film, wasting their own talents and those of a strong cast. McBride plays […]
Posted inArts + Music
Hop falls flat
Hop, directed by Tim Hill (Alvin And the Chipmunks), is about a friendship between the digitally animated Easter Bunny-in-waiting, EB (Russell Brand), and the unemployed and whiny Fred O’Hare (James Marsden). When EB runs away to Hollywood to become a drummer, a trio of ninja bunnies is dispatched to retrieve him while an overgrown evil […]
Posted inArts + Music
Blood-chilling Insidious
Saw director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell ditch the blood spilling and go for blood-chilling with *Insidious*, the most thoroughly terrifying film since its influential ancestor Paranormal Activity. After an accident in his new home, little Dalton (Ty Simpkins) goes into a mysterious coma, a development that coincides with much supernatural weirdness. His parents […]
Posted inArts + Music
Source Code executes
Duncan Jones follows up his Kubrick-cool debut Moon with an earthbound piece of sci-fi, one starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a soldier continually re-living the eight minutes leading up to a train bombing. While trying to figure out the identity of the bomber, Gyllenhaal’s Colter Stevens also tries to figure out how his superiors (Vera Farmiga […]
