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REVIEWS
Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist: Que Cera, Cera
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 10.5.08 at 2:57pm.
To call the new Michael Cera romantic comedy slight is putting it lightly. Nick And Nora’s Infinite Playlist attempts to make a leading man out of the young, po-faced Canadian actor who was so effective last year in Superbad.
Director Peter Sollet, who has certainly come down in the world sinc...
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Miracle At Saint Anna: Spike Lee's third cinematic masterpiece in a row
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.28.08 at 12:09pm.
Spike Lee’s latest film, Miracle At Saint Anna, has accumulated some wildly divergent reviews. Some have acclaimed it as brilliant and insightful; others have denounced it as lumpy and uneven. Currently it’s got a 28 percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes, hardly a fair consideration of such an import...
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Lakeview Terrace: A Creepy Picture of Race Relations
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.22.08 at 7:30pm.
Lakeview Terrace might initially seem like a standard studio assignment on first view. Surprisingly, it’s topped the box-office charts for its opening weekend.
A creepy neighbour potboiler superbly realized by director - playwright Neil LaBute, it’s a perfect vehicle for character actor Samue...
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Lost Song: Domesticity as a slow-motion prison
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.15.08 at 1:40pm.
Low key but absolutely engrossing, Lost Song is one of the unexpected pleasures of this year's Atlantic Film Festival. Then again, New Brunswick writer/director Rodrigue Jean has already delivered the unexpected with his two previous features, Full Blast and Yellowknife. Both twisted issues of se...
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Hamlet 2: Maybe the best movie ever about the witless enthusiasm of theatre
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.29.08 at 10:07am.
Riotously funny, sharply satiric and tremendously acted, Hamlet 2 might just be the best movie about the witless enthusiasm of theatre ever made.
Driven by a jaw-droppingly effective performance by Brit Actor Steeve Coogan, whose air-headed American attitude and accent are honed to perfection ...
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Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Woody Allen's Gaudi adventure
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.16.08 at 7:25am.
After a brief filmmaking exile in England, Woody Allen's European tour continues with a side-trip to Spain. The result is the slight but occasionally delightful comedy Vicki Cristina Barcelona.
Powered by two delicious performances by Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz - who lift the rest of the ...
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Brideshead Revisited: Once More With Feeling
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.5.08 at 12:12pm.
A remake of Evelyn Waugh’s famous novel Brideshead Revisited would seem to rather unnecessary. After all, that landmark 1980s British TV series made a star out of Jeremy Irons and provoked copycat fashion mini-revivals of 1930s Oxford scarves and sweaters in the trend-happy United Kingdom just be...
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Dark Knight: "It’s great from start to finish"
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.24.08 at 6:06pm.
Rarely has a film lived up to its advance hype as has The Dark Knight, the sequel to Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s remarkable revival of a once dead cinematic comic book franchise.
There were so many people at the Tuesday night 8 pm screening I witnessed the audience spilling onto the ver...
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Hellboy II: Guillermo del Toro's Masterpiece
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.15.08 at 6:46pm.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army seems to have picked up only a grudging nod from the critics over its opening weekend. Perhaps the double trouble of being a sequel of a comic book franchise had something to do with it. Or it might be that many opinionmeisters just didn’t bother to actually sit throug...
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WALL-E: Robot Movie Becomes Robotic
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.27.08 at 3:30pm.
Some critics have gone gonzo over the new Disney/Pixar animated flick WALL-E.
That only proves that if you throw in a few references to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece 2001, film snobs eyes tend to glaze over.
The reality is that WALL-E does indeed have some lovely moments, particularly ...
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The Happening: A Brisk and Economical Chiller
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.14.08 at 4:36pm.
Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan’s latest flick is an environmental thriller that would make a brilliant B-Movie if we still had those kinds of categories.
Instead, The Happening is getting a pummelling from critics fed up with the Indian-American’s trademark ‘gotcha’ style of slick chi...
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The Strangers: It's nothing terribly original but surprisingly effective
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.3.08 at 3:49pm.
Texas cinematographer Bryan Bertino has knocked one out the park with The Strangers, his first directoral effort. Tense, creepy and minimal, it’s the definitive contemporary scary couple attacked by weirdos in a remote cheepie house.
Keeping the cast small, the locations few and the atmosphere...
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Indiana Jones: Marvelous Filmmaking and Massively Entertaining
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.25.08 at 8:23am.
The long-awaited fourth Indiana Jones flick has arrived, and it offers further proof of the franchise’s enduring potency.
Indiana Jones And the Kingdom Of the Crystal Skull is edge- of- your- seat filmmaking from Hollywood’s leading producer and directing team, George Lucas and Stephen Spielbe...
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The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian has more battles, less magic
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.19.08 at 12:44pm.
The second installment in the big screen adaptation of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia series is actually a little bit better than the lead-off movie, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Prince Caspian is darker and grander, and director Adam Adamson has a surer grip on how to handle British author C.S. L...
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Iron Man Flies High
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.2.08 at 5:38pm.
The first of 2008’s big budget summer blockbusters, Iron Man is shockingly good.
Powered by a tight, economical script - by two of the team who wrote the riveting sci-fi flick Children Of Men - that cleverly doubles back on itself, delivering a doppleganger-style climactic battle that is a she...
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Snow Angels: Breaking up is hard to do
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.25.08 at 5:50pm.
David Gordon Green’s Snow Angels is a powerful and haunting drama about contemporary families falling apart.
Filmed in Halifax a few years ago, it represents a shift for the young indie filmmaker from his previous three films, all shot in his native American South.
Green, whose influence on...
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Forgetting Sarah Marshall: a sprightly sex comedy that sings
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.19.08 at 3:33pm.
The Judd Apatow movie machine just keeps rolling on. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a sprightly sex comedy that is - surprise, surprise - both funny and tender. The Hollywood Megaproducer (40 Year Old Virgin, Drillbit Taylor) seems to release a new film these days about every four months.
Driven...
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Smart People: A cinematic misfire
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.13.08 at 12:22pm.
Fans of Halifax actress Ellen Page who are expecting the sparkle of Juno in her follow-up film Smart People will probably be disappointed.
In a rather typecast role as a cranky Republican Youth high schooler - and the daughter of an even crankier and supremely unconvincing Dennis Quaid as a Vi...
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The Bank Job: A fine piece of Olde World cinema
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.22.08 at 8:24am.
Kiwi director Roger Donaldson's heist flick The Bank Job is a slick and entertaining robbery film that revisits a notorious Baker Street bank safety deposit break-in from 1971.
Building in concentric circles of intrigue and suspense, the movie follows a bunch of amateur working-class thieves w...
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Stop Loss: A Powerful, Haunting Film
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.30.08 at 2:59pm.
Kimberley Peirce’s long-awaited follow-up to Boys Don’t Cry, Stop Loss, is getting the same short shrift that almost all Iraq war fictional flicks have received from the antsy American movie going public.
That means that like Home Of the Brave, Redacted, In the Valley of Elah and several other...
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In Bruges: A collision of irony, violence and wit
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.8.08 at 1:47pm.
The opening night film of this year's Sundance Festival, In Bruges is the feature debut by London-based Irish playwright Martin McDonagh (The Pillowman, The Lonesome West).
Utilizing his trademark collision of irony, violence and wit, McDonagh - who won an Oscar for his 2005 short Six Shooter ...
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Juno: Page Is Great; Juno Is Just Good
Submitted by filmguy on 12.22.07 at 9:32am.
The long-awaited arrival of Halifax actress Ellen Page's starmaker-film Juno can’t help but be a bit of a letdown.
Page is brilliant in the film. Without her, neither Jason Reitman’s paint-by-numbers direction nor Diablo Cody’s pre-fab indie movie script would add up to anything out of the ord...
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Atonement: Another Book To Screen Mismash
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 12.20.07 at 9:32am.
There are any number of reasons why the big-screen cinematic adaptation of the popular post-modernist novel by Ian McEwan, Atonement, doesn’t really work.
One could be that old saw that great literature rarely makes good movies. The many post-modern effects from the book - the revolving points...
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Golden Compass: Not So Golden
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 12.9.07 at 1:44pm.
American Pie producer and director of About A Boy, Chris Weitz, has made a mess of British author Philip Pullman’s new fantasy movie franchise The Golden Compass, adapted from Pullman’s novel Northern Lights, part of his popular His Dark Materials series.
The movie is a rampant traffic jam of ...
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Before The Devil Knows You're Dead: Veteran director Sidney Lumet at the top of his game
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 12.2.07 at 3:56pm.
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead is a low-key but potent triumph for longtime director Sidney Lumet. It’s a late-in-career revival for a man who’s already committed a clutch of classics to the American Cinema Cannon, including masterworks like 12 Angry Men, Network and Murder On the Orient Expr...
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No Country For Old Men: Larded with black humour
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 11.18.07 at 7:45am.
The Coen Brothers have returned to the glories of their greatest films, Fargo, and Miller’s Crossing, with their latest work, a screen adaptation of novelist Cormac McCarthy’s book, No Country For Old Men.
Dark, taciturn and yet larded with black humour, No Country For Old Men features some bu...
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Beowulf - Pride, Lust, and 3D
Submitted by Johnston Farrow on 11.30.07 at 11:08am.
Much ado has been made in regards to Beowulf, the adventure-fantasy that was shot to be seen in 3D IMAX. While 3D is something that adds to the movie going experience, the visual gimmickry can just as easily take away from the storyline. In the case of director Robert Zemeckis’ take on the Norse ...
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The Mist - A study in mist-ifying circumstances
Submitted by Johnston Farrow on 11.26.07 at 7:20pm.
Whatever form it takes, be it zombies, a super virus, or a massive meteor, the apocalyptic disaster movie hinges on one question that almost all of us who have seen one of these flicks have asked ourselves: what would you do in the same situation?
Now, I’d be a geek if I told you exactly what...
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August Rush: A hyperventilating musical with eye-candy aplenty
Submitted by filmguy on 11.21.07 at 9:50am.
August Rush is one of those films that seems so unbelievable you can’t imagine how it actually got made. A rhapsodic melodrama with a plot that could only fit into a lumbering 19th century opera, it takes the term ‘musical’ into a hyperventilating place that makes greeting card emotions seem soph...
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Martian Child: Lost in Space
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 11.1.07 at 9:45am.
John Cusack is a wonderful actor. His charm can often lift a mediocre film into a higher zone altogether. Alas, even his abundant gifts falter faced with Martian Child, a drippy, sentimental and manipulative modern-day adoption story set on the West Coast.
Adapted from David Gerrold’s award-wi...
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American Gangster: Something Fresh On The Take
Submitted by Johnston Farrow on 11.8.07 at 8:30pm.
It’s hard not to believe we’ve seen it all in today’s climate of film re-makes, re-vamps, and general redundancy. But every so often, comes a film that takes an existing genre and turns it on its head.
In the case of Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, it transforms the mob film and makes it so...
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Poor Boy's Game: A Knockout
Submitted by filmguy on 11.8.07 at 2:49pm.
Poor Boy’s Game is finally getting its nation-wide commercial release after performing spectacularly on this fall’s Film Festival circuit.
The best film ever made about Halifax, and certainly one of the top Canadian films of this or any year, Poor Boy’s Game balances raw drama with a refined c...
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The Assassination of Jesse James: Long and Slow, but Engrossing
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 10.25.07 at 3:02pm.
I sincerely hope Warner Brothers isn’t willing to let The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford fizzle out on the exhibition scene across North America in the run up before Christmas.
The epic-length flick - 160 minutes long - debuted well in through the Fall Festival Circuit ...
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Elizabeth: The Golden Age - Spectacle fit for a Queen
Submitted by Johnston Farrow on 10.16.07 at 4:57pm.
Like its 1998 predecessor, Elizabeth: The Golden Age is the kind of movie that wins statues during awards season. The sequel to the simply titled Elizabeth, starring the dynamic and captivating Cate Blanchett in the title role as the first named Elizabeth to the throne, ups the ante in set and co...
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Eastern Promises: Stunning Setpieces But No Knockout
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.23.07 at 7:38am.
David Cronenberg’s new film Eastern Promises is strong, but it’s no knockout.
Following in the footsteps of a genuine masterpiece in A History Of Violence, the Toronto-based director again uses Viggo Mortensen as his central figure. This time, however, the duo move to the dank milieu of London...
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3:10 To Yuma: A Solid Remake Of A Classic
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.9.07 at 6:54pm.
James Mangold’s remake of the classic western 3:10 To Yuma has become the surprise hit prestige picture of the late summer. And no wonder. With a terrific cast and a superb script based on the original Elmore Leonard story, it’s a film that broadens and deepens - but doesn’t quite surpass - the D...
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Common: The state of here and now
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.7.07 at 7:43pm.
One of the most powerful - but neatly restrained - indie flicks I’ve seen for the 2007 AFF is Kansas director Jeremy Fiest’s Common. A road movie that deconstructs the friendships of three twentysomething men on the cusp of adult careers, Common is a playfully formal, mesmerizingly shot and beaut...
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Scouts Are Cancelled: An examination of the soul of Nova Scotia
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.6.07 at 6:52pm.
One of the cinematic marvels I watched in the programming run up to AFF ‘07 is ex-Haligonian director John D. Scott’s feature-length literary biography enigmatically titled Scouts Are Cancelled.
It’s a 72-minute portrait of the former Toronto performance poet John Stiles, a longtime friend of ...
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Over The GW: Rehab revealed
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.4.07 at 4:17pm.
Amidst the hidden gems of this year’s Atlantic Film Festival is the gripping New York City rehab drama Over The GW. Written and directed by Nick Gaglia and based on a true story, it’s a powerful disturbing story set amidst the unregulated and rather dodgy sector of practical behaviour modificatio...
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Hairspray: Song and dance a second time around
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.24.07 at 7:26pm.
The movie version of the hit musical Hairspray is a puzzling cinematic experience. Based on John Water’s 1988 trash classic of the same name but drained of its corrosive nature and brilliant garbage can aesthetic, the new flick is a relentlessly happy, song-and-dance simulacrum of the original.
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Superbad: Supergood
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.18.07 at 2:57pm.
Superbad is the best youth comedy about guys since Dazed And Confused. Relentlessly funny, surprisingly sweet, and powered by a ribald teen longing that is deliciously politically incorrect, it delivers on the comedic promise suggested by this summer’s earlier popular and acclaimed comedy, Knocke...
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Becoming Jane: ‘Girl Power’ circa 1800
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.10.07 at 7:15pm.
Becoming Jane represents Hollywood scraping the bottom of the barrel. Since there are no Jane Austen novels left to film - a few have been already done several times, witness Pride And Prejudice - producers have scampered over the great writer’s scanty biography to concoct a new bio-pic aimed at ...
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Sunshine: Pretty Hot
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.27.07 at 9:14pm.
Danny Boyle’s space opera Sunshine has finally arrived in town, trailing a raft of rotten reviews and uninspired media interest.
It might be that Joe Critic is tired of Boyle’s genre-hopping career. Sure, he wowed’em with youth cult classics like Trainspotting and the zombie landmark 28 Days L...
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Talk To Me: Top of My List
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.25.07 at 6:34pm.
Kasi Lemmons’ third feature, Talk To Me, is clearly her most immediate and accessible film. A fast-paced bio-pic of the Washington DJ and Television personality Petey Greene, it resembles the great recent cinematic portrait of Ray Charles in its sweeping approach to an African American man’s life...
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Introducing The Dwights: A Delight Despite the Title
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.20.07 at 7:22pm.
The unfortunately-titled Australian film, Introducing The Dwights, is one of the hidden gems of this rather flat cinematic summer.
A contemporary domestic dramady built around the British actress Brenda Blethyn - a favourite of the ultra-realist director Mike Leigh - it’s a flick that summons ...
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Book Vs Film: Gods And Monsters
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.9.07 at 7:38pm.
Christopher Bram’s 1996 novel Father Of Frankenstein became Bill Condon’s Academy Award-winning feature film Gods And Monsters. With a paperback version of the novel - renamed to match the movie - now hitting the remainder bins, fans of filmic adaptations have a chance to compare the two.
The ...
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Transformers Is Terrific
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.6.07 at 2:11pm.
Transformers is one of those films that you really can’t knock.
Adapted from the old Saturday Morning TV series - in association with Hasbro for the obligatory toy tie in - it’s long, indulgent and a bit uneven, but also funny, fast-paced and full of some of the best CG effects you’ll see all ...
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Evening: Claire Danes Is Stunning
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.28.07 at 1:23pm.
Evening is like The Hours without Virginia Woolf. Producer / screenwriter Michael Cunningham - who scored such a success with that novel-turned-screenplay a few years ago - has returned to the same territory of juggled timelines and lush romanticism for this new film, which is directed by the vet...
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A Mighty Heart: Mighty Good
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.23.07 at 2:03pm.
Maverick British director Michael Winterbottom may have just moved into the big leagues with his latest effort, A Mighty Heart. Formerly known for a series of highly original (24 Hour Party People, The Claim) and controversial (Nine Songs, Tristam Shandy) art-house films, the English filmmaker co...
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Fantastic Four: The World is in Peril
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.15.07 at 1:32pm.
In the old Marvel Comics pantheon, the Fantastic Four were one of that company’s premium brands. It was the closest the innovative graphic art entertainment company came to pure Science Fiction; only Doctor Strange went further in its examination of philosophical, scientific and faith-based issue...
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Hostel Part II: Now I'm Afraid of the Rich
Submitted by Matthew Sullivan on 06.15.07 at 10:56am.
Much in the same way that the original Texas chainsaw massacre made me afraid of rednecks, Hostel 2 makes me fear the rich.
In this sequel, director Eli Roth continues to flesh out (pun intended) a new sub genre of the horror film, dubbed "torture porn." Though I don't imagine the director enj...
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Hollywood director Daniel Petrie's, The Neptune Factor, On DVD
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.10.07 at 7:23pm.
The first of three Nova Scotia-shot films by legendary Hollywood director Daniel Petrie, Sr. has finally resurfaced on DVD. The undersea adventure The Neptune Factor is now available through 20th Century Fox.
And while it’s by no measure Petrie’s best film, it was one of his most financially s...
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Knocked Up: I'm Not Knocked Out
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.4.07 at 4:31pm.
Judd Apatow’s contemporary reconciliation comedy Knocked Up has the Hollywood hype machine in overdrive. Even hard-bitten, big-city critics are foaming at the mouth over this two-hour and ten-minute cinematic trifle.
it’s truly shocking to see once-sensible people lose their heads when confron...
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Severence: Smart Alec Slasher
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.1.07 at 11:07am.
The British slasher film Severence follows in the smart-alec footsteps of UK hits such as Shaun Of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. It’s a smart, self-conscious popcorn movie that knowingly states its conventions while adding elements of pointed contemporary social criticism.
Severence starts out origin...
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Waitress: A Marvelous and Melancholy Masterpiece
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.25.07 at 12:53pm.
If Jim Jarmusch remade Like Water For Chocolate in Atlanta, it might look and sound a bit like the late Adrienne Shelley’s marvelous third feature Waitress.
Shelly - once one of indie film icon Hal Hartley’s stock acting company - was tragically murdered last fall in New York City as she was p...
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Shrek 3: This Vehicle Has Run Out Of Gas
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.18.07 at 1:00pm.
Shrek might just be one feature cartoon franchise that has finally run out of gas. The latest installment, Shrek The Third, is a shrill and shallow exercise in pop culture re-and-deconstruction that takes the iconoclastic tale of the friendly ogre to a place that’s fit only for shilling plush toy...
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Away From Her: A Solid Snooze
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.16.07 at 9:15am.
I must be the only person in the world who thought that Sarah Polley’s feature film writing and directing debut, Away From Her, was a solid snooze.
Sure, it’s got two wonderful actors at its core in Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie. And yes, it’s adapted from a deeply moving Alice Munro short...
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28 Weeks Later: Apocalypse-du-jour
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.11.07 at 10:41pm.
28 Weeks Later is the inspired sequel to the hit British zombie flick of a few years back, 28 Days Later. While not quite as sharply drawn or gripping as that first film, the new movie does have some substantial charms.
Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo concentrates on a fluid, blurry and often...
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Spiderman 3: Cinema snobs might sneer, but Spidey swings high
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.4.07 at 4:56pm.
While the majority of serious film critics seem to have turned thumbs down on Sam Raimi’s third and latest installment in the Spider Man movie franchise, audiences and populist reviewers have lost none of their enthusiasm for the comic-book flick which constitutes the first of this year’s summer ...
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Disturbia's Arresting Teenage Snoops
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.30.07 at 10:09pm.
Disturbia has been topping the box-office charts for the last two weekends in the big lead-up to the spring blockbusters; Spider Man 3 opens this Friday, sure to end the film’s stratospheric ascendancy.
Cleverly marketed as Rear Window for teens, the film’s premise is indeed pretty darn good. ...
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Bava Box A Horror Gem
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.21.07 at 4:47pm.
Anchor Bay has done horror film fans a big favour by collecting up five cleaned up versions of the Italian master filmmaker and special effects wizard Mario Bava’s most important films.
Dating from the early and mid-1960s, these are some of the most influential of all Italian films. While art-...
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Hot Fuzz: A Comic Masterpiece
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.21.07 at 10:46pm.
For most North Americans, Hot Fuzz is just the follow up film to the quirky British zombie comedy Shaun Of the Dead. Little do many audiences suspect - on this side of the pond, at least - that the dreadfully titled Hot Fuzz is an English comic powerhouse, an inspired cross between the original W...
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The Lives Of Others: Good, But Over-rated
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.18.07 at 10:00am.
By now, the German film The Lives Of Others has piled up enough awards and accolades to make it one of the most acclaimed international movies of the last few years.
And while it’s a solid entry in the long-simmering creative renewal of the German film scene, The Lives Of Others is edging dang...
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Pathfinder Passes the Comic-to-Screen Test
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.14.07 at 4:45pm.
Pathfinder is the latest entry in the graphic novel to big screen sweepstakes.
Like the Spartans vs Persians epic 300, Pathfinder takes off from a basic historical scenario to follow a relentless action-oriented path.
The result is surprisingly effective. Despite some historical lapses - th...
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Re-Animator Re-Animated
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.12.07 at 1:36pm.
Renowned horror film director Stuart Gordon has received the deluxe DVD reissue treatment from Anchor Bay for his 1985 camp gore-fest Re-Animator. Gordon is known to Maritimers for shooting a film with Irish actor Stephen Rea in Saint John, New Brunswick, entitled Stuck, last fall.
Adapted fro...
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Grindhouse: Glorious Cinema Trash
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.9.07 at 8:21am.
Grindhouse, the long-awaited double-bill collaboration from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, is just about what you’d think it would be: a tribute to and evocation of early-’70s inner-city and drive-in cinema trash. it’s two separate films (Rodriguez’ Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Pr...
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The Reaping: Cliches
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.3.07 at 10:45pm.
What Hillary Swank and Stephen Rea are doing in a blustery, Devil-By-Numbers clunker like The Reaping is something only their agents might be able to explain.
Stephen Hopkins’ Louisiana-set contemporary supernatural thriller treads some of the same apocalyptic ground as The Omen and its variou...
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Amazing Grace: one of the best historical films of this or any year
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.27.07 at 3:23pm.
Michael Apted’s genuinely moving and informative movie treatise on the struggle to end Britain’s slave trade - titled Amazing Grace after the hymn - is one of the best historical films of this or any year.
Centered around the charismatic performance of Ioan Gruffudd as tireless dynamo reformer...
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The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.24.07 at 1:08pm.
British director Ken Loach’s latest, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, is one of his most anticipated films. A big winner at last year’s Cannes Awards, the chronicle of two crucial years in the Irish War of Independence and its immediate aftermath in the early 1920s has been widely acclaimed for i...
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A Treat At The Edge Of Your Seat
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.21.07 at 1:21pm.
Robert Stewart’s environmentally-minded debut feature film Sharkwater has been getting the big push from distributors Alliance Atlantis lately and no wonder.
A virtually unclassifiable non-fiction film that starts out as a natural history documentary and then develops into an international pol...
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This Fido Really Is A Dog
Submitted by RON FOLEY MACDONALD on 03.19.07 at 3:23pm.
Andrew Currie’s horror satire Fido is one dead dog of a movie. Filmed in British Columbia with a couple of Americans and one British star, it’s a Canadian film that tries a little too hard to be funny and original.
The trouble is, it’s neither. I don’t think I laughed once. I can just imagine ...
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Perfume: An Audacious Epic Indeed
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.14.07 at 11:15am.
Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer has one of those trailers almost deliberately designed to turn potential audiences off.
Emphasizing a rather silly premise - a young Frenchman who has supernatural abilities to sniff fragrances and essence - the preview also plays up Dustin Hoffman’s dreadful ...
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300: Comic book mythic history on screen
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.9.07 at 5:31pm.
300 has collected an astonishingly snarky set of reviews considering that it is a cinematic adaptation of a graphic novel retelling the heroic events of the Battle of Thermopylae in the 6th century BC.
Think comic book. Think classic battle at the outset of Greek Culture, at the birth of West....
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A Terrifying Zodiac
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.4.07 at 12:02pm.
Zodiac is one of those once-in-a-lifetime films that creates real horror out of the ashes and ruins of everyday life.
As scary as Stanley Kubrick’s 1979 masterpiece The Shining, David Fincher’s portrait of three men obssessed by San Francisco’s Zodiac serial killer is certainly as good or bett...
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Factory Girl Factory Fresh
Submitted by Ron Foly Macdonald on 03.5.07 at 4:36pm.
Factory Girl is one of those films which carries quite a bit of baggage before it even opens. Directed by ‘Mayor of Sunset Strip’ documentarian George Hickenlooper, it’s a portrait of the relationship between New York ‘It’ girl Edie Sedgwick and her artist/patron Andy Warhol in the mid-1960s. The...
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Black Snake Moan A Southern Gothic Stew
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.1.07 at 4:03pm.
Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan is a picture-perfect example of a problematic second film. The follow-up to the acclaimed - and now, in retrospect, probably over-rated - Hustle And Flow is even more strident and determined than its predecessor, which was no slouch in its treatment of modern-day o...
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Music And Lyrics Gets Off on the Wrong Note
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 02.25.07 at 12:38pm.
Writer/Director Marc Lawrence’s valentine romance barely made any impact on the heart-weary holiday’s box-office figures. Perhaps that’s because the film - a limp cocktail of musical satire and gooey romance - promises far more than it delivers.
Sure, you do get Hugh Grant gamely sending up bo...
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Last Sin Eater Is Pretty Tasty
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 02.12.07 at 11:14pm.
The Last Sin Eater is an example of the fascinating proliferation of faith-based filmmaking that has been flourishing in the wake of Mel Gibson’s box office monster The Passion Of The Christ.
Earnest and low-budget, this would be an indie sleeper if it didn’t wear its Christian colours so bra...
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Unpleasant people being very bad to each other
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 02.8.07 at 7:59pm.
Richard Eyre’s Notes On A Scandal has corralled enough great reviews to make the film a must-see in the busy pre-Oscar season. And while the Judi Dench vehicle is indeed a compelling watch, Notes On A Scandal shares a fatal flaw with screenwriter Patrick Marber’s play and film Closer: it’s about ...
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Peter O'Toole's Twilight Masterpiece
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 02.3.07 at 10:54pm.
Venus is startling, edgy and ultimately very moving film about a very rare subject: age and desire. It may also be the swansong of a very great actor, Peter O’ Toole, who delivers a performance portraying an unusual screen emotion, elegant lechery. It’s marvelous from start to finish.
Despite ...
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Because I Said So
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 02.1.07 at 4:22pm.
Because I Said So is one of those pieces of cinematic flotsam that oozes out into the exhibition world between the cracks in all the frenzy leading up to the Oscars. A virtually unwatchable meddling mommy flick that ends up a kind of post-feminist King Lear crossed with The Matchmaker, it’s the l...
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Book vs Film: Book Wins
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 11.19.06 at 12:00pm.
Filmmaker Todd Field’s follow-up to his acclaimed literary adaptation In The Bedroom is an even more ambitious adult drama. This time he’s tackled American satirical novelist Tom Perotta’s 2001 suburban angst 'n-adultery book, Little Children. Perotta is best known for another volume transformed ...
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Pan's Labyrinth
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 01.27.07 at 1:54pm.
Guillermo Del Toro’s feature fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth is well on its way to becoming the one of the most over-hyped films of 2007. Given a small-scale release at the end 0f 2006 in order to qualify for a Foreign Film Oscar nomination, the movie has now opened wide while riding a crest of very stro...
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Eastwood's movie 'Letter from Iowa Jima' the lesser of his two war flicks
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 01.24.07 at 3:31pm.
Clint Eastwood’s companion film to Flags Of Our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima, has piled up more awards, critical acclaim and box office returns than its narrative mate.
It’s a bizarre situation, because while Letters From Iwo Jima is indeed a fine piece of filmmaking, it’s clearly the lesser...
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The Last King Of Scotland
Submitted by filmguy on 01.19.07 at 5:18pm.
Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King of Scotland has been piling up some amazing critical notices, and no wonder. It’s an edge-of-your-seat character study of Idi Amin, the ruthless Ugandan dictator seen through the partly fictionalized eyes of his young Scottish personal physician.
Veteran America...
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It's a Dog
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 01.14.07 at 4:18pm.
Nick Cassavetes Alpha Dog is yet another installment in what has been an exceptionally uneven directing career. Cassavetes is the son of the great American Indie filmmaker John Cassavetes and his imposing actress wife, Gena Rowlands.
Cassevetes - Nick that is - jump-started his directing caree...
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Adultery and redemption in a stunning landscape
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 01.11.07 at 2:15pm.
Filmed twice before, The Painted Veil’s late British colonial story of adultery and redemption keeps threatening to fall into fusty Masterpiece Theatre territory.
Surprisingly, the film avoids the typical pitfalls of contemporary costume dramas to deliver a powerful narrative about despair, de...
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Accelerated action makes Children of Men harrowing cinema
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 01.7.07 at 5:06pm.
There have been previews running for Alfonso Cuaron’s Children Of Men since the late summer, but nothing will prepare you for the film’s overwhelming impact.
A tightly-wound sci-fi chase story with a relentlessly dour outlook, Children Of Men ditches character studies for accelerated action. O...
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Of the best in movies it was Spike Lee's year
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 12.30.06 at 12:18pm.
2006 held its best movies for the last few months of the year, piling up an astonishing list of strong entries from October onward.
So many, in fact, that some top titles such as Pan’s Labyrinth and Little Children will necessarily spill over into 2007 as they wait for the holiday exhibition ...
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