People who bemoan the state of Canadian film, when compared with the media juggernaut that is the American film industry, would do well to watch Popcorn With Maple Syrup: Film In Canada From Eh To Zed, a clever and entertaining 2004 documentary that is still timely. It goes a long way to dispel what at …
Fresh from one of its most successful festivals to date, the Yukon Film Society presents a trio of superb films in its monthly Available Light Cinema series, March 22 and 23. Headlining the bill is the triple-Oscar winning Twelve Years A Slave, followed by award-winning documentary Cutie And The Boxer, and a new Coen Brothers …
The Princess Bride is the ideal post-Christmas movie fare for the whole family. It’ll be playing at the Yukon Arts Centre on the afternoon of Jan. 12, as part of the Yukon Film Society’s Available Light Cinema series. First released in 1987, it has become an all-time classic, inspiring the contemporary success of films like …
It’s not too early think about movie fare in the New Year, and one of the highlights of the upcoming season is the new music documentary Muscle Shoals. Originally premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, it’s now featured as the first offering in Available Light Cinema’s January lineup. Muscle Shoals is a vibrant and loving …
On Monday the Yukon Film Society’s Available Light Cinema series presents a little-known but fascinating story in the history of Canadian Labour, with its showing of Under The Red Star. Employing archival footage and reenactments in a seamless fashion, the film tells of the historic Finnish Labour Temple, built in 1910 in Port Arthur, Ontario, …
New Film Highlights Struggles of the Finnish Labour Movement in Thunder Bay Read More »
“I deal with stuff that’s too dumb for people to have bothered to formulate opinions on,” David Byrne says in his 1986 film True Stories. Byrne, front man for the band Talking Heads at the time, directed and starred in the film, which is a quirky mockumentary that purports to portray everyday life in the …
The Canadian Labour International Film Festival (CLIFF) celebrates its fifth anniversary in the Yukon on Wednesday, November 20. CLIFF is an initiative of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), presented locally by the Yukon Employees Union (YEU). Designed to showcase the realities of working life in Canada and around the world, CLIFF will present …
For a novice filmmaker, Moira Sauer has been getting a lot of mileage from her six-minute silent short. The latest victory for her film, The Provider, is an invitation from Telefilm Canada to screen at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in mid-May. The Provider started life as a last-minute entry in Cold Snap, a competition …
Musicians perform Daniel Jankey’s new score for the The Grub-Stake Revisited in Vancouver at the Vogue Theatre. The Yukon Arts Centre presents a live showing on April 29 The Yukon Film Society (YFS) is taking it’s production The Grub-Stake Revisited on tour in early May as part of Northern Scene at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre …
The Old Fire Hall in downtown Whitehorse will host the second annual Out North Film Festival on the weekend of April 19-21. Buoyed by last year’s successful debut of the only Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,Transsexual (LGBT) film festival North of 60, organizers Fiona Griffin and Debbie Thomas have assembled a package of five features and six …
We’re all used to seeing films about broken-down musicians, but broken-down magicians? Based on the evidence of The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, it’s a category best left unexplored. The film opens with a young boy being chased by bullies. He arrives home breathless, only to find a note from his mother, wishing him a happy birthday, …
I wanted to like Silver Linings Playbook more than I did, and really anticipated seeing it when it came to Whitehorse, two months after its release practically everywhere else. It has eight Oscar nominations going for it, plus a solid cast of Robert De Niro, Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. The film also deals with …
Jessica Chastain graces local screens for the second time this month, but on this occasion, the redheaded Oscar nominee is scarcely recognizable. Decked out in a jet-black wig and sporting a tattoo, she plays Annabel, a punk-band guitarist, in first-time director Andreas Muschietti’s new horror film Mama. Taking its original inspiration from a three-minute short, …
This Ghost Story Does A Decent Job of Being Creepy Read More »
Mike Faughey-Scraggs is an orthopedic surgeon at Leeds Teaching Hospital in England. He’s a former high diver and an experienced mountaineer, having scaled Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. In the summer of 2008, he participated in the grueling Yukon River Quest, paddling his one-man kayak from Whitehorse to Dawson City. Added to these impressive qualifications is …
Local Filmmaker Chronicles Extraordinary Journey Read More »
Tickets are on sale now for the Yukon Film Society’s annual Available Light Film Festival, which takes place Feb. 4 to 10 at the Yukon Arts Centre in Whitehorse. Among the lineup are two films by Indo-Canadian filmmakers delving deep into the culture of contemporary India. Midnight’s Children Midnight’s Children is Deepa Mehta’s newest effort. …
Indo-Canadian Filmmakers Shine a Light on Contemporary India Read More »
Steve Carell, from NBC-TV’s hit series The Office, and 30 Rock‘s Tina Fey work well together in Date Night, a screwball-comedy that quickly morphs into a rather confusing, but still enjoyable pseudo action-thriller replete with car chases, strip clubs and encounters with gun-toting hoodlums and crooked cops. Fey still manages to look like Sarah Palin, …
It Takes Two Great Comedians to Make It a Comedy Read More »
For what it is, Clash of the Titans isn’t a bad movie. The battle and action scenes are arresting enough; the computer-generated imaging works well. If you can hark back to the days of sitting in the balcony, munching popcorn at the Saturday matinée, the film should satisfy fairly well. Just don’t expect much in …
This 3-D is Better in 2-D, with 1-D Characters and 0-D Plot Read More »
I feel somewhat the victim of misrepresentation after recently watching Robin Hood. Maybe if the film had been billed as Robin Hood: The Prequel, I’d feel better about the whole thing, or maybe in the final analysis, it really doesn’t matter. But anyone expecting to see a retelling of the traditional story of Friar Tuck, …
Middle Row, Centre: Big Budget and Big Names Cannot Save Robin Hood Read More »
I saw an item on TV the other day, showing how there are a number of oil wells and derricks operating in the Los Angeles area, disguised inside actual office buildings. It’s a good graphic illustration that reality isn’t always all it seems. Nowhere does this apply more significantly than in the world of dreams. …
Middle Row, Centre: This Movie is a Dream Come True Read More »
I have a theory about Tom Cruise. I think that ever since his episode of jumping on Oprah’s couch some five years ago, and going prime-time with his Scientology allegiance, the mainstream media knives have been out for him. No matter how good the movies he makes are, he can look for disappointing box office …
Middle Row, Centre: Knight and Day is Just Fun … OK? Read More »
Last week, I heard a fellow named Edward Luttwak talking on CBC Radio, on a program about war. Luttwak knows whereof he speaks — he’s a military strategist and historian who’s been a consultant to the US defence department and has served in the Israeli Army. In an ironic twist on John Lennon’s famous dictum, …
Middle Row, Centre: It’s Not Interesting, It Just Looks That Way Read More »
Thanks to the Yukon Film Society, Whitehorse has its own de facto repertory cinema, in the form of the once-monthly Fire Hall Films series, shown at The Old Fire Hall at the foot of Main Street. This month’s offering is an entertaining double bill on Thursday, July 8, showcasing a unique look at a northern …
The Other Guys is another of those films that can’t seem to make up its mind about itself. Is it an action thriller, a buddy movie, a cop drama, a comedy or an exposé of corporate wrongdoing and manipulation? Or is it a combination of all of the above, never quite landing solidly in any …
It looks like perhaps the season of sequels has passed, to be replaced by the season of spy thrillers. After Knight and Day and Inception, which had a semi-spy theme, along comes Angelina Jolie’s latest starring vehicle, Salt. Salt is the kind of film that could have been made in 1975. It could not have …
Middle Row, Centre: Salt is the New Flavour of the Month Read More »
Robert Downey Jr.’s performance is the best thing to come out of Iron Man 2, the second in what looks to be a succession of comic book-based films we can expect to grace cinema screens this summer. Downey stars as Tony Stark, a flamboyant multi-billionaire playboy type who is testifying before a US Senate hearing …
Middle Row, Centre: Iron Man 2: Too Much Iron, Not Enough Man Read More »
The word antihero could well have been invented for the likes of Jonah Hex. His story is yet another in the summertime crop of comic books or old TV series adapted into films, this time one of DC Comics’ longest running, but lesser-known series. Maybe that’s because it features a protagonist from out of the …
Three Films in One … But Only One Real Character Read More »
For moviegoers, disillusioned by the dismal crop of films this summer, there’s hope ahead. The Arts Film Series will soon return to the Qwanlin Cinema for its fall season. A staple feature at selected Landmark cinemas for a number of years now, the series highlights short runs of independent and foreign films on Sundays and …
Middle Row, Centre: The Arts Come to Qwanlin Cinema Read More »
The Canadian labour movement has designated November as Labour Films Month, and has put together a package of films highlighting the history and struggles of workers in North America and worldwide. These will be shown in 50 different locations across the country. Locally, the Yukon Employees Union is sponsoring CLIFF, the Canadian Labour International Film …
There are no car chases in Charlie St. Cloud. No explosions. No endless battle scenes. No vampires. Just a good old-fashioned love story, set in a graveyard. Charlie St. Cloud stars Zac Efron, who breaks away here from his usual teen flicks like Seventeen Again and High School Musical, and Amanda Crew, a 24-year-old from …
Middle Row, Centre: Just an Old-Fashioned Love Story Read More »
Many movies dealing with the CIA seem to draw from two seminal films for their inspiration. One is the 1962 thriller The Manchurian Candidate, starring Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey, (later remade in 2004, with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep). The other is Three Days of the Condor, filmed in 1975 with Robert …
Middle row, centre: Red: Inspired by Two Key Predecessors Read More »
Veteran documentary filmmaker Ron Mann is in Whitehorse this week, hosting workshops through the Yukon Film Society. Mann will discuss the process of making independent documentary features from development to distribution, amply illustrating his presentation with clips from his more than a dozen feature and medium length documentaries. Ron Mann is that rarity among Canadian …
Inner questioning about how meaningful apologies can be took Whitehorse filmmaker Mitch Miyagawa on an emotional journey that culminated in his documentary A Sorry State, showing this weekend at the Yukon Arts Centre. “[The film] starts with an incident with my kids fighting and making them apologize to one another and realizing that apologies can …
The Arts Film Series continues through the month of October at the Qwanlin Cinema, with three more films in what proves to be one of the best lineups for this series in a long time. The only trouble with the series is that it’s only offered on Sundays and Mondays, so moviegoers have to be …
Middle Row, Centre: Winter’s Bone Bleak, But Worth Watching Read More »
I have a friend, a long-time Yukoner, who returned to live in her native France last year. I plan to visit her next summer in her new home nestled beneath the Cevennes Mountains, where she gardens in the Languedoc-Rousillon region of south-central France. A scant half–hour drive southwest of her is the village of Barjac, …
Middle Row, Centre: Using Food to Make a Village Healthy Again Read More »
It’s a pretty safe bet that not too many of us will be worrying about peak oil during the holidays. But it’s an equally safe bet that it’s something we’ll all have to deal with in the coming years, perhaps sooner than we think. As oil becomes scarcer and more expensive, our petroleum-based North American …
Whitehorse, September 11, 2001. While a city was transfixed to TV screens that revealed the horror in New York City, its population could take consolation that the events were unfolding far away from them. All that suddenly changed when local radio broke the news that a Korean Air Boeing 747 was being diverted from Alaska …
Middle Row, Centre: Probing the Mystery of Whitehorse 911 Read More »
The subject of cheesy musicals came up in a conversation the other day.Oklahoma was mentioned, as was South Pacific. “You want cheesy, go see Burlesque,” exclaimed one of the conversants. I had to agree with him: Burlesque is cheesy. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth seeing. In many ways, Burlesque is an anachronism, really …
Middle Row, Centre: Sure it’s Cornball, but Well-done Cornball Read More »
Graduation time for local high schools is almost here, and with it comes the usual round of bush parties, barhopping and celebrations, too often combined with poor judgement when it comes to transportation. In an effort to curb incidents of impaired driving during grad celebrations, a number of secondary school students have joined forces with …
Middle Row, Centre: Student Filmmakers Get a Crash Course in Moviemaking Read More »
As a new year dawns, it looks as if the electric car may finally be coming into its own. Japan’s Nissan Motors is ready to debut with its new Leaf hybrid vehicle, and General Motors is mass-producing its much-ballyhooed Chevrolet Volt at its Detroit-area Hamtramck plant, preparing for a spring 2011 rollout. GM’s enthusiasm for …
When I went to see Bridesmaids recently, I couldn’t help making the inevitable comparisons to Sex And The City 2, which showed locally about six months ago. Although Bridesmaids didn’t portray its protagonists as a crew of bimbos and airheads the way the former did, it came close, and ultimately was saved by a couple …
This weekend the Japanese Canadian Association of the Yukon presents a free showing of two excellent films from Japan. Playing on Friday is Departures, a gentle and profound semi-comedy on life and death.Kagemusha, an epic drama from the great Akira Kurosawa, is featured on Saturday. Departures tells the story of Daigo Kobayashi, a cellist in a …
Aron Ralston is a 35 year-old mechanical engineer and mountaineer who was exploring eastern Utah’s Blue John Canyon in Canyonlands National Park in the spring of 2003. That’s where the agonizing events described in his 2004 book Between A Rock And A Hard Place took place. James Franco plays Ralston in the Oscar-nominated film, 127 …
If you’ve ever wanted to take extreme measures against your employer, then Horrible Bosses might just be your cup of tea. Not that the exploits of the bumbling trio who star in this comedy would actually be of any help. Jason Bateman, whose work in Juno and the TV series Arrested Development renders him the …
Asense of loneliness pervades the atmosphere of The Mountie. Filmed on location in the Wheaton Valley two years ago, with a sizeable contingent of Yukon cast and crew, it portrays life in a small Yukon community in 1894. Into a tiny northern village – really, a conglomeration of tents and a makeshift church – wanders …
Elizabeth Halsey, played by Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher, is a woman who knows what she wants. What she wants is a new pair of breasts, to help her snare a rich guy and escape the teaching profession she hates so much. As the film opens, the school year has come to an end and …
Based on a series of true events and featuring a gripping performance from screen veteran Anthony Hopkins, The Rite is the story of a modern exorcist. There’s no pea soup or spinning heads here, and The Rite relies less on shock special effects than on the tension between skepticism and belief. Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom …
So it’s come to this, and so early in the post-Oscar film season. Not quite the onset of the summer blockbuster season, the most popular film playing locally at this writing is The Hunger Games. Its competition is American Reunion, the fourth in a series of replays of a crude comedy that first appeared in …
Bethany Hamilton is a 21-year-old resident of Kauai, Hawaii who says that she was born to be a surfer. On the morning of Halloween, 2003, she lost her left arm to a 15-foot tiger shark while surfing. The true story of Hamilton’s ordeal comes alive in the new film Soul Surfer, starring Helen Hunt, Dennis …
Recently opening in Whitehorse and fully deserving of its twelve Oscar nominations is The King’s Speech. The film features British actor Colin Firth as King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II, and Brisbane native Geoffrey Rush as the Australian speech therapist who helped the king conquer an acute stammering problem. History tells us …
Aremake currently playing in Whitehorse that is in some respects actually an improvement on the original is Arthur. The 1981 version, which starred Dudley Moore in the title role, earned Shakespearian actor Sir John Gielgud an Academy Award for his memorable role as Hobson, Arthur Bach’s manservant-protector. The current version of this comedy is reasonably …
The Lincoln Lawyer has some good things going for it, not the least being a gripping portrayal by lead actor Matthew McConaughey. He plays a character for whom the word cynicism could have been invented, and he plays it well. Mick Haller is a streetwise Los Angeles lawyer who knows his way around a courtroom …
A feature voted by film writers in 1984 as the best Canadian film ever and a trio of movies with themes of human and animal interaction highlight the Yukon Film Society’s last Available Light Cinema offering of 2011. Mon Oncle Antoine, the 1971 Canadian classic from Quebec director Claude Jutra, leads off the day’s films. …
I have begun to despair that The King’s Speech was the last we will see of intelligent films until Academy Award season rolls around again. Already, the summer “blockbuster” season, with its mind-numbing array of uninspired sequels and recycled remakes, is nearly upon us. The two offerings currently playing at the Qwanlin do little to …
The Rum Diary should be a better film than it is. The main problem with it is that there’s not one character with whom we can identify, or who is even remotely likeable. It’s based on a 1959 novel by Hunter S. Thompson, when the gonzo journalist was just 22. It remained unpublished until 1998. …
Ben Stiller manages to portray a hyper, driven sort of guy in most of the films he’s featured in. Tower Heist, his most current outing, is no exception. Here he plays Josh Kovacs, the manager of The Tower, an ultra-swank luxury hotel in New York’s Central Park. As he rushes around, looking after a large …
In the middle of downtown New York, crowds watch aghast as people leap from upper-storey windows to their deaths, and the building they’ve tried to escape from is rapidly consumed by overwhelming fire. No, the scene isn’t the Twin Towers on 9/11, ten years ago. The date is March 25, 1911, and this year marks …
Atractor-trailer winds its way along the Alaska Highway from Terrace, B.C. Its cargo is a single gigantic log, 30 feet long, weighing 13,000 pounds. Within weeks, the massive red cedar will be transformed into something that hasn’t been seen in the Yukon for hundreds of years – transforming 19 young lives in the process. “The …
I wasn’t expecting to like New Year’s Eve, not being a particular fan of the artificially-imposed gaiety that can characterize that particular holiday. But after sitting through Clint Eastwood’s creaky and static J. Edgar before it, I found the movement and upbeat pacing of this ensemble piece to be a lot more uplifting, and this …
Middle Row, Centre: Plot Upon Plot as the Ball Descends Read More »
In the writing game, plans frequently go awry (or, as Robbie Burns would have it, they gang aft agley). When I embarked on this particular piece, my intention was to write a lighted-hearted screed about the joys of people-watching on public transit. Alas, somewhere around Draft 17, things started to go sideways. So my whimsical …
I fail to see why films like Safe are made. Nasty, cynical, and of no redeeming social value whatever, its convoluted plot seems only to serve as underpinning to the constant barrage of violence it subjects us to. Safe tells a story that could well have been an interesting one, were it not for its …
The summer blockbuster season has truly gotten underway with the launching of The Avengers onto local screens. A fairly mundane plot-line is helped along immeasurably by 3-D, now availably locally for the first time. The film has been much awaited by Marvel comics aficionados, and has been breaking all box office records, with a return …
As the summer blockbuster season begins to unroll itself before us, the latest among the current batch of remakes is Dark Shadows. It first saw light of day as a gothic daytime soap opera back in the ’60s on ABC-TV, and its current incarnation is a mixed bag indeed. Johnny Depp appears as Barnabas Collins, …
Fresh from the success of its recent Out North film festival, the Yukon Queer Film Alliance has scheduled a repeat performance double-bill of the festival’s two most popular films, Cloudburst and Tomboy. They’re both warm and vibrant films that regale us with moving insights into love among the very old and the very young. Cloudburst …
Playing this week is the last of the Qwanlin Cinema’s Filmtastic Films series for the fall season, formerly dubbed the Art Films series. It’s a musical effort entitled Sparkle, a remake of a 1976 film of the same name. The updated Sparkle features a trio of young women loosely resembling the Supremes, a performance by …
Middle Row, Centre: Sparkle a Fitting Swansong for Whitney Houston Read More »
Landmark Cinemas’ Filmtastic Films series reaches its halfway point October 9 with Water For Elephants, a charming period piece about circus life in Depression-era America. It stars Reese Witherspoon (Sweet Home Alabama, Walk the Line), Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds) and Robert Pattinson (the Twilight saga series). The year is 1931. Cornell veterinary medicine student Jacob …
As its title suggests, Cowboys and Aliens is a mélange of western and science-fiction genres. Unfortunately, it is another example of a good idea gone wrong. As the film opens, we see a lone figure stranded in the middle of a New Mexico desert setting, circa 1875. He has a mysterious wound in his side, …
For a summer blockbuster, Captain America: The First Avenger stands up remarkably well. Perhaps it’s the film’s faithful attention to detail as it portrays ’40s America, or because it chronicles a simpler era, when the lines were clearly drawn in what can be considered as the last “just war”. Drawn from the Marvel Comics pantheon …
The Filmtastic Films series at the Qwanlin Cinema winds up this week with The Devil’s Double, a thoroughly violent and often horrifying film that will turn many viewers off, but which features a performance by British actor Dominic Cooper that is truly riveting. Cooper plays Uday Hussein, the son of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who …
Landmark Cinemas’ Filmtastic Films series (formerly the Arts Films series) continues October 2 and 3 with The First Grader, a feature filmed in Kenya and based on a true series of events. It stars a former ’70s Kenyan TV anchorman, Oliver Litondo, as an 84-year-old illiterate farmer and Kikuyu tribesman, Kimani N’gan’ga Maruge. Maruge shows …
With the summer blockbuster season now safely and mercifully behind us, it’s time for the major studios to start releasing the films that they’ll be pinning their Oscar hopes on come February. One of the first efforts out of the gate, Argo, already looks like a strong contender for best picture of the 2012-13 season. …
Middle Row, Centre: Argo Marks an Excellent Start to Oscar Season Read More »
Landmark Cinemas’ Filmtastic Films series (formerly called the Arts Films series) reaches its halfway-point this week with Like Crazy. A shoestring-budget independent feature that won the Grand Jury award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, it’s a love story that’s remarkable on a number of fronts. Most notable is the fact that its dialogue is …
Landmark Cinemas’ Filmtastic Films series has returned for another season at the Qwanlin Cinema, showing recent independent films and mainstream movies that would not normally be presented locally. The series kicked off last week with the Martin Sheen film, The Way, about a father and son’s separate voyages along Spain’s famous pilgrimage trail, the Camino …
For Toronto film director Ingrid Veninger, keeping it in the family seems to be a recipe for success. She will be accompanying her newest film, i am a good person/i am a bad person,when it plays in Whitehorse at the Available Light Film Festival next week. i am a good person/I am a bad person …
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Yukon Film Society’s Available Light Film Festival, highlighting an impressive array of more than 30 feature films ranging from documentaries to political thrillers to comedies, with a fiercely Canadian – and international – scope. One of the overriding themes clearly apparent from a survey of the festival’s …
It’s almost as if the summer blockbuster season has started early, with the much-heralded opening of The Hunger Games. Based on a best-selling trilogy by former children’s author Suzanne Collins, the film seems destined to follow in the footsteps of Harry Potter and the Twilight Saga in its appeal to young audiences, already grossing some …
At the risk of alienating a packed theatre full of 18 to 25-year-olds, I must confess after a recent viewing of 21 Jump Street, to finding it easily the worst film I’ve seen so far this year. I know, there will be lots of comments on how it’s such a great spoof of the endless …
The last in Landmark Cinemas ‘Filmtastic Films series for this season screens this week at the Qwanlin. A Dangerous Method is the latest film from Canadian director David Cronenberg, and explores the historic origins of modern psychoanalytic theory with three very fine actors. Viggo Mortensen, (Eastern Promises, A History Of Violence) stars as Sigmund Freud …
The second-last movie in Landmark Cinemas’ FilmtasticFilms series at theQwanlin Cinema this week isCarnage, a black comedy with an all-star cast. Academy Award winners Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and Jodie Foster, and Oscar nominee John C. Reilly are featured as two New York City couples whose children are involved in a playground altercation. Waltz and …
Now that the Oscars buzz has subsided, with the winners all declared, it’s gratifying to see that at least one Academy Award nominee has currently made it to local screens. Although George Clooney was deemed a strong contender for best actor, he was overtaken by French actor Jean Dujardin from The Artist, but it’s well …
The most recent in Landmark Cinemas’ Filmtastic Films series (formerly the Art Films series) is Canadian director David Cronenberg’s 2012 Cannes Film Festival entry, Cosmopolis. It’s a haunting, wordy-yet-prescient film, about a day in the life of a young multibillionaire. Robert Pattinson, renowned for his role in the Twilight series, plays Eric Packer, a 28-year-old …
Middle Row, Centre: A Claustrophobic Ride From Cronenberg Read More »
Clint Eastwood’s new film Trouble With The Curve is the first on-screen featurre outing from the 82-year-old actor since his 2008 appearance in Gran Torino, which was billed as his swansong at the time. Rumours of Eastwood’s imminent retirement having proved to be premature, the new film is a creditable effort, and a welcome relief …
Middle Row, Centre: No Harm No Foul From Latest Eastwood Flick Read More »
Summer may be over, but it seems the sequels and remakes are not. Quickly ascending to the Number 1 box office position in its first week of release with $21-million in sales was Resident Evil: Retribution. It’s the fifth film in the repetitious but highly successful series first unleashed in 2004. The franchise first saw …
The onset of fall signals the start of a new season for the Yukon Film Society’s Available Light Cinema series at the Yukon Arts Centre. Kicking off the series on September 16 is Beasts of the Southern Wild, a winner of this year’s Cannes Film Festival Camera D’Or award, as well as the 2012 Sundance …
The Odd Life of Timothy Green is a strange little sort of movie that borders on being maudlin, but still manages to bring forth its own peculiar charm. Sympathetic portrayals by veteran actress Jennifer Garner, 15-year-old Israeli-born newcomer Odeya Rush and juvenile actor CJ Adams make us want to believe in its essentially implausible and …
The Bourne Legacy is the fourth in the highly successful series of films adapted from Robert Ludlum’s spy novels, featuring Matt Damon as renegade intelligence agent Jason Bourne. But don’t look for Damon in this film. You won’t find him—or Jason Bourne, for that matter. Damon took a pass on this one, as did series …
The summer onslaught of sequels and remakes continues unabated, without showing signs of letting up. One of the latest entries in Hollywood’s parade of sameness is Total Recall, a remake of the 1990 film of the same name that featured Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s not a bad effort, although it doesn’t have the same excitement as …
The Whitehorse Curling Club will undergo a transformation a little over a week from now, taking on a picnic/drive-in atmosphere for Movie Night at the Rink. Families are encouraged to bring a lawn chairs or blankets and watch a trio of specially selected all-time favourites on the club’s two large screens. The evening double bill …
It seems the summer blockbuster season this year isn’t turning out all that badly after all, with the quality of major films already a lot better than last year’s crop. A case in point is The Amazing Spider-Man. Although it has started slipping from its initial number one box-office position, it still deservedly commands a …
Yukon Film Society’s Available Light Cinema series is scheduled for at least one summer showing at the Yukon Arts Centre, although it’s been switched from Sunday to Thursday performances. This month’s offering is a dynamic double bill, featuring a documentary on one of the most influential musicians of our time, as well as New Zealand’s …
Adam Sandler’s latest starring vehicle is a crude and lewd piece of low-life comedy that may well offend a certain demographic slice of the population, and will probably endear itself mightily to yet another. In That’s My Boy, Sandler is teamed with fellow Saturday Night Live alumnus Andy Samberg to play a loutish boor of …
Middle Row, Centre: Formulaic, but Sandler Pulls it Off Read More »
Director Ridley Scott broke some real ground in science-fiction films, first in 1979 with Alien, and again in 1982 with Blade Runner. Both films flew in the face of the sanitized and gleaming other worlds presented in Star Wars, the most successful model for the genre to that date. Alien took place on a very …
We’re in the thick of it now. Blockbuster season has arrived, with its bumper crop of sequels, remakes and films based on comic-book heroes. Still to come are Captain America, a Planet of the Apes sequel and, of course, the last of the Harry Potter films. Transformers 3: The Dark of the Moon is this …
