Movie goers have developed a taste for the unsung hero. Box office hits like Superbad, Knocked Up and Pineapple Express serve to show how easy and enjoyable it is to root for characters with little more than a strong will and a knack for the absurd. While this formula for success seems to have created… Continue reading Judge’s Extract lacks comedic flavour
Tag: Movies
“Away We Go” a delightful romp
By Ryan Pike
Just over a decade ago, acclaimed British stage director Sam Mendes made the jump to film with American Beauty. The movie won five Academy Awards and instantly catapulted Mendes to the A-list. Since then, he’s used the medium to explore fatherhood with Road to Perdition, wartime boredom with Jarhead and the family unit with 2008’s… Continue reading “Away We Go” a delightful romp
An unvirtuous affair to forget
Easy Virtue, a play by English playwright Noel Coward and then a silent film by Alfred Hitchcock, is director Stephan Elliott’s fifth movie. Depicting the whirlwind marriage of an upper-class Englishman, John Whittaker (Ben Barnes), to an adventurous American widow, Larita (Jessica Biel), Easy Virtue highlights the effect of the union on John’s strictly traditional… Continue reading An unvirtuous affair to forget
Fanboys’ jokes only good for Star Warriors
Fanboys, hold on to your lightsabers. Fanboys, directed by Kyle Newman, is being released in Canadian theatres with its original story line intact, to the great joy of its fans. Not so long ago — 1998 to be exact — in a place not so far away — Ohio — four boys make an epic… Continue reading Fanboys’ jokes only good for Star Warriors
Talk about a bonus project
By Ryan Pike
Society, we’re told, is in dire straits. The economy is in recession, folks aren’t willing to help each other out and everyone seems fine with doing the bare minimum. At a time like this, an odd beacon of light shines bright. That beacon? Shorts. Short films, that is, in the form of the Show Us… Continue reading Talk about a bonus project
DON’T SPEAK
The English language can be, at best, maddening at times. With homonyms, parallel structure and the horrors of their, there and they’re, the language’s eccentricities can drive a person to kill sometimes. In Bruce McDonald’s latest horror flick, Pontypool, a virus infects the townspeople’s speech, slowly and insidiously destroying the small town community of Pontypool,… Continue reading DON’T SPEAK
Chilling beginning, confusing ending
Most Canadian horror films are shlocky exploitation films. Shot quickly on the cheap, they’re often nothing more than direct-to-DVD teen slasher films, immediately disposed of after one viewing. Pontypool, theoretically, could have been another crappy Canadian horror film. Shot for half a million dollars over two weeks in Ontario, it could have been nothing more… Continue reading Chilling beginning, confusing ending
Segel and Rudd are funny guys
The buddy movie has been a popular brand of entertainment for decades, but it seems that only recently has it delved into the softer complexities of male friendship and mined homoeroticism for comedy. I Love You, Man, the latest buddy-comedy to hit theatres attempts to do precisely that. Terms like “bromance” have been tacked onto… Continue reading Segel and Rudd are funny guys
Doc looks into the issue of intellectual property
Ever since Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album hit the Internet, the mash-up has blown up in popular culture. From the Hood Internet’s cleverly-titled electronic dance hall music to Dsico the No-Talent Hack’s glitchy cut-ups, it’s a genre that has become prevalent in hip music circles for its post-modern take on the canon of pop music.… Continue reading Doc looks into the issue of intellectual property
Fanning the flames of bromance
I Love You, Man takes the concept of a man who is most at ease with those of the opposite sex and sticks him in a situation where having guy pals is kinda important: a wedding. The movie is a refreshing and amusing look at the relationship between two very different men brought together by… Continue reading Fanning the flames of bromance