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: The Bronze
Melissa Rauch, The Other Girl from The Big Bang Theory—“Not Kaley Cuoco, not Blossom, the other girl!” has crafted herself a terrific lead role in Hope Ann Greggory, a foul-mouthed, emotionally stunted former Olympic gymnast. Still living at home with her postal worker father (the great character actor Gary Cole, from Veep and The Good Wife), Hope is half-coasting through […]
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Review: The Little Prince
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 […]
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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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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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Halifax rockers share thoughts for Kurt Cobain’s birthday
On Saturday, the world will once again mourn the loss of Kurt Cobain: tomorrow, February 20th, would have been his 49th birthday. Without a doubt, the Nirvana frontman is one of the most influential and legendary figures in the history of rock music. In a few short years (roughly five), he made his Seattle garage […]
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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 […]