I’m gonna lay it all out for you: If you watched the trailer for Hall Pass and thought “I bet I could tell you, beat by beat, exactly how that movie’s plot is going to go”, then you are likely correct in your assumptions. Save for a some supporting cameos and a few typically-scatological set pieces, the Farrelly brothers’ latest film feels exactly like the marriages it seeks to satirize: good-natured and comfortable, but ultimately tepid and crushingly predictable.
Cigars, whiskey, sunglasses, a naked waitress straddling a clothed, but unzipped Nic Cage, the line “I never disrobe before gunplay”, gunplay, sex, sex and gunplay and whiskey and cigars at the same time. This is the sort of thing you will find in Drive Angry, the newest film in Nic Cage's long and illustrious oeuvre, and this is just one scene.
9:00PM! Saturday Feb 26, 2011! At the Toronto Underground Cinema! From the director of RAPPIN’ and LAMBADA! From the producers of BLOODSPORT and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2! Get ready to pop, lock, flare & freeze! After over 25 years, BREAKIN’ returns to Toronto! Come out, breakdance and behold a MEGA-RARE screening of a 35mm print […]
The first trailer for the DC universe animated film Green Lantern: Emerald Knights debuted today. Emerald Knights is an anthology of short animated films, in the same vein as the Batman: Gotham Knight film that coincided with the release of The Dark Knight. Similarly, this film will be released in the weeks leading up to the live action Green Lantern film on June 17th.
This weekend sees the release of Hall Pass, the latest movie from the Farrelly brothers (There’s Something About Mary, Dumb & Dumber, Stuck On You). We’ll have our review of the film up soon, but in the meantime director/writer Bobby Farrelly and co-writer Kevin Barnett sat down for a roundtable interview here in Toronto, and Dork Shelf’s own Ian MacIntyre was invited to join in. Bobby and Kevin discussed Hall Pass, how comedy has changed, marriage, and crazy Three Stooges casting rumors.
All-Star Superman is DC's newest animated feature and drops today on Blu-ray and DVD; it follows the storyline set out by the comic book of the same name. Released between November 2005 to October 2008, All-Star Superman gave us the quintessential Superman story - there were elements from every part of his mythos, and it was all tied together by one overarching plot point: Superman is dying, and needs to come to terms with his mortality.
I'll admit I have never been a fan of Kevin Smith. I wouldn't necessarily call him a bad filmmaker; more that the worlds he creates and the characters that inhabit them have never held any interest for me. So when the teaser trailers appeared for Red State, I was intrigued. It neither looked nor sounded like a typical Smith film. And it isn't, and that is entirely in its favour. Smith has proven he can create a dark, intense film that is riveting and raw, and unabashed in its examination of the serious threat of the religious right in America.
This Week in Dork is a new feature that will attempt to encapsulate all of the dorky events happening in and around Toronto every week. This week's highlights include a free Tim Burton Day at the Lightbox, a metalhead documentary, a classic monster movie and more!
Miranda July has a fascination for strangers, and how the comforts of the ordinary life perhaps become so comfortable that our reaction is to break out in rather unconventional and perhaps inadvisable ways. These themes that she explored in her first film, You and Me and Everyone We Know – the desire to find yourself through other people, and make some sort of connection – are taken to even deeper and richer heights in her new film The Future.
Jacob Tierney’s third feature film, Good Neighbours, adds a distinctly Canadian twist on a classic Hitchcock-style thriller, envisioning a cold, claustrophobic world in which no one can be either trusted or in many ways resisted. Set in 1995 during the Quebec referendum, the film spies on three Anglophone residents of an apartment block who try to find friendship merely through proximity and language.
Even with the invention and proliferation of television, radio remains a relevant and fascinating medium. There are some excellent films about the power of the DJ voice, from Talk Radio to Pump Up the Volume to The Fisher King. Something about the disembodied voice allows the listener to imagine any person they choose as the owner of that voice, and twist the words to their own ideals. Sang Man Kim’s new thriller Midnight F.M. can easily be added not only to the radio film canon, but also to the slate of great thrillers being produced in recent years in South Korea.
There is a particular subgenre of kitschy horror film that comes out of countries like Spain and Italy. Usually something to do with some dark legend, a dark devil, and a group of hot young people who get caught up in the madness. Spanish director José Luis Alemán continues with his Valdemar series in La Sombra Prohibida, based on H.P. Lovecraft's work. You have the ingredients for a cult Spanish horror film, but unfortunately the film doesn’t entirely work out.
Anytime a film has Guillermo del Toro’s name attached to it, a viewer has some fairly standard and somewhat high expectations. Del Toro wrote the screenplay for and produced Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, which has many of his signature tropes. This film is admittedly not up the standards of his previous work, but it is a better-than-average horror-fantasy film with a decent story and enough scares to keep it entertaining.
A new trailer for the live action adaptation of the Marvel Comics superhero Thor has hit the web. The Kenneth Branagh directed action epic stars Chris Hemsworth as the titular Norse god, robbed of his power and cast down to Earth by his father Odin. The film also stars Anthony Hopkins as Odin, and Natalie Portman as his love interest, Jane Foster.
Although we've had an idea of what the Spider-Man film costume was going to look like for awhile now, we finally get an official picture of the ol' red-and-blue tights. Along with it comes the announcement of the film's title: it will be officially referred to as The Amazing Spider-Man in all future news posts.
