Film reviews and capsules
Most recent reviews
May. 17, 2012 / 865: Road Trips
What To Expect When You’re Expecting
In What To Expect When You're Expecting, the best-selling pregnancy book of the same name gets adapted for the big screen with four interconnected couples navigating various paths… Read more »
May. 17, 2012 / 865: Road Trips
Dark Shadows
A pale reflection of Tim Burton's past, Dark Shadows is a pretty anemic vampire flick, a creature-feature comedy without bite. It begins with a fairly unimaginative Gothic backstory.… Read more »
May. 17, 2012 / 865: Road Trips
The Deep Blue Sea
In a coal-smeary London still recovering from the Blitz, in rooms of hanging smoke in which despair nestled in the wallpaper, in the backseats of cars and back… Read more »
May. 16, 2012 / 865: Road Trips
Edwin Boyd: Citizen Gangster
The directoral debut for Nathan Morlando is based on the story of Edwin Boyd, a Second World War veteran who returns home to Toronto to few prospects and… Read more »
May. 09, 2012 / 864: The Barbecutionist
Miss Bala
Unfolding in bracing, often unnervingly confusing scenes constructed from lengthy single takes, the dominant tone of Miss Bala (a bleak pun of a title, exchanging "Baja," as in… Read more »
May. 03, 2012 / 863: Cold Specks
The Five-Year Engagement
A comedy of procrastination, The Five-Year Engagement gradually slips from awkward-funny moments to some droll dawdling along. But, while overstaying its welcome by about half-an-hour, it becomes… Read more »
May. 03, 2012 / 863: Cold Specks
The Avengers
Gathering together a diverse crew of Marvel Comics all-stars—some already well into their respective movie adaptation franchises—to collectively combat the threat of intergalactic totalitarianism, The Avengers, helmed by… Read more »
May. 03, 2012 / 863: Cold Specks
Boy
For its three-letter brevity, Boy is actually quite an apt title for director Taika Waititi's 2010 New Zealand comedy, in being simple and straight to the point:… Read more »
May. 03, 2012 / 863: Cold Specks
The Pirates! Band of Misfits
Before it even leaves port, The Pirates! Band of Misfits could show one of those olde buccaneer notice-boards, its message scrawled in blood—Warning to all ye who enter:… Read more »
May. 03, 2012 / 863: Cold Specks
Hard Core Logo 2
Hard Core Logo, Bruce McDonald's 1996 faux-documentary portrait of its titular grizzled and fictive punk quartet on the road for one last tour, arguably remains a highpoint in… Read more »
May. 02, 2012 / 863: Cold Specks
Damsels in Distress
Opens Friday Princess Theatre The titular damsels of writer/director Whit Stillman's new movie, his first in 14 years, are in each pretty, preppy, poised and alert to… Read more »
Apr. 25, 2012 / Infinite Lives - The worst game ever created
World on a Wire
A little knowledge goes a long way in World on a Wire, the late, great, wildly prolific Rainer Werner Fassbinder's little-seen, three-and-a-half-hour 1973 made-for-German-TV science-fiction chamber epic adapted… Read more »
Apr. 25, 2012 / 862: The Real Deal
The Raven
This fictional—repeat, fictional—account of Edgar Allan Poe's (John Cusack) last days is a grim, deranged tale of a mad serial killer who uses Poe's work as the inspiration… Read more »
Apr. 25, 2012 / 862: The Real Deal
Safe
There is such thing as being too smart for your own good. To say Mei (Catherine Chan) is a whiz with numbers is an understatement. The 11-year-old has… Read more »
Apr. 25, 2012 / 862: The Real Deal
The Lucky One
Defendant: Nicholas Sparks, writer of The Lucky One. Co-accused: Scott Hicks (director), Will Fetters (screenplay). Charges: Crimes against drama; grief porn; hokey romance with a Christian halo. Previous… Read more »
Apr. 25, 2012 / 862: The Real Deal
Undefeated
The Manassas Tigers, a high school football team in inner-city Memphis, have never won a playoff game. Not in more than a century as a school; like so… Read more »
Apr. 25, 2012 / 862: The Real Deal
Chimpanzee
About as gorgeously photographed and shamelessly anthropomorphized as African Cats, director Alastair Fothergill and company's previous Disney-approved pseudo-nature documentary/family adventure film, Chimpanzee follows the trials of three-year-old Oscar,… Read more »
Apr. 25, 2012 / 861: The Long Game
Bully
'This was a really hard film to make. A fundamentally hard film to make. It never stopped following me around. The emotional navigation of this is something you're… Read more »
Apr. 25, 2012 / 861: The Long Game
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
It begins with a slow push-in through a smudgy service station window on men sitting low, conversing, eating round a small table, their voices muffled. Maybe it's only… Read more »
Apr. 25, 2012 / 861: The Long Game
The Three Stooges
Not too heavy on the nyuks but a bit light on sustained yuks, The Three Stooges is occasionally better than its outdated source material. But there's only so… Read more »
