The Uninvited is a filmed on Bowen Island remake of the spooky 2003 South Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters. That would normally be enough to make me wish that I was uninvited to the premiere screening but when you toss in an Oscar nominated acting craftsman like David Strathairn and red hot Elizabeth Banks whose performances get stronger every time out we get a passable melodrama. They play ...
The Class stars Francois Begaudeau as teacher Francois Marin the lead character from his 2006 autobiographical novel of the same name. Looking like an authentic documentary we spend a year in his classroom of tough Parisian fourteen year old kids of diverse ethnic background and already expressing their own individuality. While some of his fellow faculty are despondent with the daily grind of ...
Inkheart is a fictitious book of fiction at the heart of this fairytale with heart whose theme is predicated on the ability of a select few to be able to literally lift characters off the page by reading text aloud. Silver tongues is how they are referred to by those animated thusly and Mo Folchart (Brendan Fraser) is one such reader. It becomes apparent that he was unaware of his ability unt ...
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans has nothing to do with moss and
tundra but a lot to do with blood lines both genetically and in
great globs on the fortress floor. In this prequel to the first
Underworld films Bill Nighy is back as Viktor the ruthless king of
a vampire coven living their long ago medieval lifestyle. Kate
Beckinsale is out of the picture so to speak but another raven
haired Bri ...
Welcome to the Sticks (Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis) is the biggest box office draw in French history. Who knew that the northern area close to the English Channel is considered the Newfoundland of France? Nowhere does that prejudice manifest itself more than within the southern sphere of influence for Philippe Abraham (Kad Merad). He's a post office executive itching for a transfer to the Rivie ...
Last Chance Harvey stars Dustin Hoffman (nominated for a Golden
Globe for this performance) as Harvey Shine a New York jingle
writer whose broken dream of being a jazz musician is just one of a
lifetime of disappointments he visibly carries. With his career
hanging by a thread he's off to England where his estranged
daughter Susan (Toronto's Liane Balaban) is about to get married.
While in L ...
Paul Blart: Mall Cop is an idea ripe for a lampoon. I mean who
hasn't run into someone doing security that's all puffed up on his
own deluded self importance. Here Paul Blart is not so much self
aggrandising as serious since he has a medical condition that
prohibits him from passing any law enforcement physical so he's
doing the next best thing. He's a single dad who lives with his
daughter ...
Notorious charts the rise of a sheltered, chubby kid from Brooklyn born Christopher Wallace (Christopher Wallace Jr) who by the time of his well publicised and untimely demise had turned his hip hop moniker of Notorious B.I.G. into almost a household name. I've never been a total fan of this music genre but like many, posthumously I found likeable moments in Biggies work. Like many I had a mi ...
Defiance unlike the former fictional westerns of the same name is the harrowing true survival story set during the Second World War of a group of Jews who in 1941 eluded the Nazi ghettos near Belarus by literally heading for the hills. After returning to their bucolic village just after it was wiped out by the SS, four brothers who knew the woods intimately (having taken flight there more tha ...
1. The Dark Knight.
Thanks for the memories Heath Ledger, we miss you already. Your
were so good you stole the show from Christian Bale - best Batman
ever and just a little more super in the superhero department than
Iron Man.
2. In Bruges.
A stand alone standout and an early entry onto my top ten list for
2008 - one that never got usurped until the Bruce Wayne
comeback.
3. Frost/Nixon.
In ...