A cute walk through history with an unwilling history-maker. Felix Herngren’s comedy has made a big splash in European markets but is going to have tougher going in the USA. Although the film will probably unseat the reigning champion “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” at the box office, its extreme creativity is hamstring by
Although The Boy Next Door borrows the formula of past thrillers and all twists are easy to see coming, the film manages enough suspense to make it entertaining. The ensemble cast is solid and the pace is fast enough to keep the audience from realizing they have seen this movie a thousand times before. Directed
Ethan Hawke’s haunting portrayal of a US Army drone pilot in Good Kill highlights the moral, emotional and psychological traps of consenting to be a warrior. He leads a double life, one in which he murders Afghanis remotely from the comfort of a protected facility outside Las Vegas and the other trying to live with
H.R. Giger was a Swiss artist who bore no resemblance to most Swiss. He was a provocateur, creating artwork unlike anything else – metallic, filled with imagery of female genitalia giving birth and skeletal but alive – put him on the map. Giger won a Special Effects Academy Award for his work on Alien and
Israeli actress Hadas Yaron plays an inhibited and closeted Hasidic Jew in Maxime Giroux’s powerful drama Félix et Meira. Yaron came from her native Israel to Montreal to shoot in minus 30 degree temperatures but that didn’t shut down her enthusiasm for the project. She plays Meira, an Hasidic Jew under the control of her
Why bother reviewing a film that will be reviewed by tens of thousands of professional and homegrown reviewers, bloggers and film fans? Why bother when reviews have been out for days, despite embargos and tweeted right after the private screening? Because I have an axe to grind that’s why. CGI is still way off being
Liam Neeson’s back with his certain set of skills as Taken 3 arrives on Blu-ray in an unrated version and loaded with enough action to keep fans of the franchise happy. The film’s formula breaks some new ground as Neeson’s Bryan Mills is set-up for the murder of his ex-wife and one the run from
Russell Crowe gives a nice try but gets no cigar in this maudlin rehash of a horrendous moment in history. Russell Crowe comes out swinging with his narrative fiction feature directorial debut but fouls out as this war story drops off the deep end into the irretrievably maudlin. Screenwriters Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasios are
The Bells was a band known for signature vocal harmonies and the hit songs “White Dove” and “Stay Awhile”. In 1965 South African sisters Jackie and Anne Ralph were performing with their trio in small town Quebec when they first laid eyes on Cliff Edwards and his band. The electricity was palpable. The girl’s manager
Ex Machina is a film for our times. It’s a cautionary tale about the potential future trajectory of artificial intelligence and our fear of it. Computers and robots are facts of life today, but their level of sophistication in 2015 may seem awfully primitive in the future as AI gains more and more footholds. It