Est. 1998
But first, an irrelevant but amusing anecdote: I’m at the Paramount multiplex in downtown Montreal for the Friday, 1:55 show. I make a stop at the little boys’ wee-wee room and who do I see taking a piss? Quebec Prime Minister Jean Charest. I’ve long hoped for the chance to tell him face to face all the contempt I feel for him, but seeing this…
Some things you just can’t explain. You know something is wrong, it’s so big you can’t miss it, but you don’t do anything about it. You let this kid grow up, feeling more and more like a misfit… Eventually, you have to confront him before it’s too late, you have to tell him: “Buddy, you’re not an elf. You’re an orphaned human who, as a…
“The Matrix Revolutions” is not as involving and groundbreaking as the first Matrix (or as sexy and cool as their Bound), but it’s certainly more satisfying than last summer’s The Matrix Reloaded. Things look dire early on, with boring supporting characters spouting Star Trekish technical nonsense or yelling at our heroes as if they were the police chief in a bad cop movie. Zion is still an ugly place,…
Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2 weren’t great films of the cinema, but who are we kidding? These are dumb, vulgar, lowbrow spoofs meant to entertain mass audiences for 90 minutes and that’s that. Chances are they won’t even achieve that ten years down the line, when all the pop culture references are outdated, but right now these flicks are good for a few laughs. You probably noticed…
Roy (Nicolas Cage) is such a good con artist that he’s conned himself in thinking that he’s spectacularly obsessive-compulsive, freaking about outdoors and dirt, full of tics and odd habits, popping pills and chain-smoking… When in fact, he’s a pretty normal guy. A little neurotic, sure, but not the twitching nutcase he sometimes works himself into. He starts thinking that maybe it’s his conscience that’s…
“You just never fucking know.” Yes, the trailer looked bad. Yes, reshoots and multiple release date changes are usually a bad sign. Yes, J-Lo and B-Aff are overexposed… But does that mean the movie during the shooting of which they met must be bashed like it’s the end of civilisation? I find it so pathetic to see the critical establishment elbowing each other to come…
8 years after their first big screen romp, the boys are back for another explosive go through the streets of Miami. Martin Lawrence is still obnoxious but, again, he’s tolerable opposite the always charismatic Will Smith. I can’t get enough of their hilarious old-married-couple bickering – I often write about the homoerotic undertones of buddy-cop movies, but here it’s so obvious that they go right out and have…
Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling) is an uptight, lonely British crime fiction writer, author of the best-selling Inspector Dorwell series. She’s getting tired of plotting tales of “blood, sex and money”, so her publisher offers her to go live in his house in the South of France to try and find her muse back. The film follows her around as she tours said house, a gorgeous…
Captain Jack Sparrow, man, what a character! He’s a little Keith Richards, a little Pepe LePew and a whole lotta Johnny Depp! I’d like to say that the film itself is as amusing as Sparrow, or that it’s worth seeing just for him, but I’d be lying. It’s not that “Pirates of the endless title: and subtitle” is a bad movie, it’s just unremarkable. As…
“This is the day of reckoning. Out of the ashes of our world will rise a new generation of Terminators designed to annihilate the human race, and our last hope in the war against machines will be one of them.” Ohmigod. Who would have known a few months ago that this would turn out to be anything more than a purely money-driven lackluster sequel? Maybe…