This terrific adaptation of the beloved children’s book for adults features a passel of Hollywood voices, but they’re beside the point. When a little girl (Mackenzie Foy), overworked by her uptight single mother (Rachel McAdams), meets a kooky neighbour (Jeff Bridges) who tells her of his adventures with the Little Prince—a boy born on an asteroid searching the universe for […]
Film + TV
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Review: Allegiant
The Hunger Games, which stretched on for a movie too long as well, at least had the good sense to end each one with a cliffhanger. (Even Twilight did that.) Divergent, the Shailene Woodley-starring Games ripoff that’s on film three of four, conversely ends as would a television series on the bubble—each installment could continue on, but if for some […]
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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 […]
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Review: Where to Invade Next
The idea that Michael Moore, the only multimillionaire documentarian, is a outsider Everyman slash provocateur has been laughable since he won the Oscar for Bowling For Columbine. His schtick—he still wears the same baseball hat/glasses/ill-fitting jean combo he’s been sporting since he was a commoner, circa 1989’s Roger & Me; he still narrates, in his […]
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Getting Wavy with Ric Esther Bienstock
“On a day to day basis, making films is not a nine-to-five job,” says Montreal’s Ric Esther Bienstock, an Emmy Award-winning documentarian with dozens of credits to her name. “You need an adventurous spirit.” This weekend, Bienstock will lead a masterclass in documentaries, moderated by Sylvia D. Hamilton, as part of Women Making Waves. Presented by […]
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Review: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Tina Fey plays her least Tina Fey-iest character in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a book she optioned because a reviewer called the author a “Tina Fey character.” We begin in 2003, where Fey’s Kim Baker (her real-life counterpoint is Kim Barker; why the single-letter name change?) has just been deployed from her boring job writing teleprompter […]
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Into the rainforest
In Embrace of the Serpent, the first Colombian feature ever to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at next week’s Academy Awards, a man helps two scientists through the Amazon jungle, 40 years apart. Each is looking for the same thing: yakruna, a sacred plant with incredible healing powers. The man, Karamakate, is an […]
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Review: Nina Forever
Nina Forever is about a morbid oddball-couple, which, if you’ve seen Corpse Bride, Let the Right One In, or Only Lovers Left Alive, will sound like familiar territory. Though this British movie (which is being sold as a horror-comedy, but that strikes me as stretching definitions of horror and comedy) barely digs beneath its surface, […]
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Review: 45 Years
Between the lyrical, lovely Weekend and the short-lived cult favourite Looking, on HBO, writer-director Andrew Haigh has pushed the modern gay man—well, the white, fit, reasonably well-to-do one—past tired, lingering stereotypes and into a place more complex and interesting (altogether now: human). So his latest is something of a curveball: A pair of senior citizens (Academy Award nominee Charlotte Rampling and […]
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Review: Kung Fu Panda 3
As far as movie franchises go, you can do much worse than Kung Fu Panda, which stars Jack Black as a panda destined to be a great martial artist. The voice cast is big-time and wonderful: Dustin Hoffman as the tiny sensei Shifu, Angelina Jolie as the stoic Tigress, Seth Rogen as Mantis, Lucy Liu as Viper and David […]
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Review: Son of Saul
Unlike most Holocaust movies, Son of Saul doesn’t go out of its way to show you the horrors; in this Cannes Grand Prix winner directed by László Nemes (making his feature debut), the atrocities pile up in the corners, on the edges, often out-of-focus or, worse, via the film’s human score of whispers, screams and […]
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Review: Norm of the North
Bear Month at the Movies continues via Norm of the North, a flat kids’ film with an intriguing premise: When a developer wants to build luxury condos in the Arctic, polar bear Norm goes to New York City to try and stop it from happening. Because polar bears can “talk human” (did you know?) everyone […]