Nobody tries very hard in the sequel to 2014’s best comedy—it’s the same movie except Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen battle a sorority instead of a frat—which detracts some humour points. But with a cast this great—especially Zac Efron; Byrne, 2014’s standout, sadly gets less to do and a rehash of insane/grossout scenarios, plus a curious and enduring feminist streak—you’ll […]
Film + TV
Posted inArts + Music
Sing Street‘s songs of youth
In the musical coming-of-age drama Sing Street, the 14-year-old Cosmo (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, in his film debut) learns about economic depression—it’s Dublin, in 1985—starts a new school where oppression is the governing tactic and discovers new wave, all in the same week. When he falls for an older girl (Lucy Boynton), he does what we all […]
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The mother of all annoying mothers
After Lorene Scafaria’s father died, her mother Gail moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles to be closer to her daughter, a screenwriter (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) and director (Seeking a Friend for the End of the World). “We were both just grieving in really different ways,” says Scafaria from New York, after the […]
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Sleeping Giant‘s big impact
The debut feature from the writer-director Andrew Cividino brings an early summer to this struggling spring in the form of Sleeping Giant, a coming-of-age story set in a Canadian cottage town. Sweet, sensitive Adam (Jackson Martin) nurses a secret crush on his friend Riley (Reece Moffett) as he tries to deal with his dad’s infidelity, […]
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Review: The Lobster
What if being single was a crime? A dystopic future of marrieds is the world posited by The Lobster, but that’s just the logline. Here’s what actually goes on: There’s a place where eligible singles gather. They have 45 days to find a mate—hetero, natch—and if they fail they’re turned into an animal of their […]
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Review: I Saw The Light
Sandwiched between last month’s Chet Baker biopic Born To Be Blue and next week’s Miles Davis film Miles Ahead is I Saw the Light, which did a round on the fall festival circuit first. It stars Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams, who in about a half-decade career managed to become an icon, despite—according to this movie, at least—being a […]
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Quiet on the set a year after Stephen McNeil’s fateful budget
Mark Furey speaks with conviction about the bright future of movie-making in Nova Scotia. “The film and television incentive fund is here to stay,” says the provincial business minister. And you’ve gotta believe he believes it. Last April, after the Liberal budget killed the film funding program that had been luring major productions to the […]
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Made-in-Halifax feature Across the Line hits theatres Friday
A million dollar-budget feature film, shot entirely in Nova Scotia, is about to hit Cineplex Theatres. But this cause for celebration is also cause for concern. Opening almost exactly a year after the Stephen McNeil Liberals announced the end of the provincial film tax credit, Across the Line is a bittersweet anniversary marker—a film that […]
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Review: Miles Ahead
Don Cheadle takes the often-staid musician’s biopic and turns it on its head with Miles Ahead, a presumed account of Miles Davis’ life somewhere between 1975 and 1980, when he was hiding out in his New York mansion, high on cocaine and playing not a note. When Rolling Stone reporter David Braden (Ewan McGregor) shows up with the aim […]
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Review: Demolition
Quebecois director Jean-Marc Vallée continues his steady march into Hollywood—you have him to blame for Matthew McConaughey’s Oscar—following up Wild and Dallas Buyers Club with the Jake Gyllenhaal-starrer Demolition. Gyllenhaal, who’s made two films with Vallée’s fellow ascendant Francophone, Denis Villeneuve, stars as Davis, an investment banker whose wife dies in a car accident. A hospital vending-machine incident inspires Davis to write […]
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Review: Eye in the Sky
The actor-writer-director Gavin Hood follows up the mostly computer-generated Ender’s Game—about a boy training to fight intergalactic war through a simulator that turned out to be real—with a similar but much more realistic battle pitched across nations in Eye in the Sky. Colonel Katherine Powell is played by Helen Mirren—a terrific, welcome force to have in a typically manly environment […]
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Review: Born To Be Blue
This Very Canadian Biopic stars Ethan Hawke as Chet Baker, who in the ’60s was womped by his drug dealer’s goons and had all his teeth knocked out. Teeth are pretty important to a trumpet player! Writer director Robert Budreau does the smart biopic take—instead of trying for a life overview, he covers a specific era, during which Baker is […]