In one of the most bizarre studio and ego driven productions to be released from a major studio this year, Jack Reacher manages to be too surreal to appeal to action fans and it’s too lunkheaded to appeal to proper cineastes. It’s simultaneously a better version of Alex Cross and a worse reimagining of MacGruber. It’s equally as awesome and awful as that sounds.
Combining top notch and genuinely emotional disaster filmmaking with sadly standard melodrama, The Impossible feels awkward, but there's still a lot to love about it.
Christian Petzold's Barbara features a lead character with a redemptive arc that feels realer than any similar arc on screen because it eschews grandstanding epiphanies.
In honour of the release of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto begins a run of the original 1966 Sergio Corbucci directed and Franco Nero starring film that gave the world one of the most iconic figures in the Western genre. Here's a look back at a bleak and bloody masterwork that inspired countless knock off and homages, including Tarantino's
Despite not being able to fully balance the autobiographical elements of This is 40 within his top heavy screenplay, Judd Apatow still delivers a loose, but satisfying slice of life comedy.
It might just be a greatest hits compilation for Cirque du Soleil and a demo reel for James Cameron's beloved 3D cameras, but this big screen outing for the Montreal based acrobatic workers looks better in 3D than The Hobbit did, and despite an almost complete lack of story, it's still quite a bit of fun.
Influenced more by film directors like Hitchcock, Lynch, and Todd Haynes, photographer Gregory Crewdson makes large scale stills from scratch often for budgets equal to that of independent film productions. Documentarian Ben Shapiro traces the artist's work and influences in this well made profile piece.
The award for the most physically uncomfortable film to watch in 2012 goes quite easily to The Guilt Trip. This 95 minutes of mother-nagging offers about 10 minutes of passable cringe comedy and 85 minutes of painfully unfunny gags that will make you want to crawl up into a fetal ball and pray for it all to end.
Monsters, Inc. solidified the Pixar formula and proved that clever, emotionally rich, and technically stunning work could be produced by the CGI dream team at will. Now that the film is (get ready to feel old) 11-years old and sliding back out into theaters in 3D, it’s clear just how special of a family flick it was. The movie remains just as funny and warm as ever, with a rather ingenious central concept strong enough to make the upcoming sequel something to look forward to.
With films coming to home video two days this week (Tuesday and Friday) here's part one of our look at the latest releases including Beasts of the Southern Wild, Killer Joe, Total Recall, Premium Rush, and Arbitrage.
Despite Bill Murray doing an okay job as FDR, Hyde Park on Hudson should have spent less time on actively trying to get Oscars by any means necessary (and goofy, tactfully shot handjobs) and instead should have aimed for a film with some actual substance.
While Meet the Fokkens tells the story of two fascinating 69-year old identical twin prostitutes in Amsterdam, the film is ultimately too slight and far too anecdotal to make much of an impact.
While dividing Tolkien's most childish and thinnest material into three films seems like a strange decision, Peter Jackson makes it mostly work with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which still manages to be a lot of fun. That new high-frame rate 3D? Not so much.
Nothing but horror for the holidays in this week's DVD column with looks at the anthology horror V/H/S, the remake Silent Night, the ridiculous concept of having a zombie Osama Bin Laden, and the truly depressing horror faced by some teens in American schools: underfunding.
This week's archival home entertainment column looks back at Michael Cimino's infamous box office flop Heaven's Gate, the strangely forgotten about Steven Spielberg hit Catch Me If You Can, and the classic noir The Postman Always Rings Twice.
