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Blog by Don Kennedy

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Four Christmases

November 27th, 2008
Four Christmases goes a long way to legitimizing my unwritten axiom – beware of movies with an all star cast. But what a cast – Robert Duval, Cissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen, Kristin Chenoweth, John Voight, Jon Favreau and country stars Tim McGraw and Dwight Yokum all trying desperately to make a comedy out of a script that isn’t funny. Kudos to Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn who despite p ...

Twilight

November 22nd, 2008
Twilight has little to do with that time just after dusk but who would have thought that we would get two fantastic teen vampire/mortal love stories in rapid succession and both based on enormously popular books. On the heels of Let the Right One In, Twilight reverses the roles and has a creature of the night boy with the girl now the potential dinner/date. Impressive Kristen Stewart who also ...

Bolt

November 22nd, 2008
Bolt (John Travolta) is an animated pooch with an affable mug but a lightning tattoo to prove he means business. No ordinary dog, with his laser vision, battering ram skull and best of all super bark he’s able to fight the evil Green Eyed Man with the help of Penny (Disney darling Miley Cyrus) his turbo charged razor scooter ridin’ human. The trouble is he can’t really do all these things b ...

Slumdog Millionaire

November 22nd, 2008
Slumdog Millionaire concisely states the outcome of a deprived lifetime that painfully prepares a young man from Mumbai for one critical moment in his life. Jamal Malik (British newcomer Dev Patel) who grew up in a tin roof shanty town built on a garbage dump was orphaned at a tender age and his only family is his slightly older brother Salim and Latika a girl also orphaned at the same time. ...

Growing Op

November 22nd, 2008
Growing Op if nothing else gives the uninitiated a ring side seat to a rarely highlighted Moncton, New Brunswick where this low budget Canadian film is was shot. Most recognizable is a not well aging Rosanna Arquette playing Diana Dawson, a stoner dropout school teacher along with series TV vet Wallace Langham as her ganja genus genius husband Bryce. The real focus of the film is their home s ...

Quantum of Solace

November 15th, 2008
Quantum of Solace as any Ian Fleming aficionado would recognize is the title from 1060’s anthology For Your Eyes Only. That’s about all that is recognizable from the original in this script polished up by Canada’s Paul Haggis. Quantum conjures up a theory of physics regarding energy but Quantum here turns out to be a clandestine organization fronted by Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) that MI ...

Synecdoche, New York

November 15th, 2008
Synecdoche, New York looks like but should not be confused with Schenectady NY where this story is set. If indeed you are not confused you will be by the end of this movie. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is Caden Cotard a little theatre director initially married to Adele Lack (Catherine Keener) literally a small time painter who dumps him to find fame and fortune in Germany. He alternately takes ...

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

November 15th, 2008
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas isn’t really wearing PJ’s. He’s Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) an eight year old in a World War 2 concentration camp uniform who we don’t meet until well into this movie based on John Boyne’s bestselling novel. Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is the films true protagonist. His father (a very un-Harry Potter-like David Thewlisis) is an SS officer enjoying the perks that go alon ...

Role Models

November 7th, 2008
Role Models is yet another formulaic but ultimately watchable comedy with a message. Danny Donahue (Paul Rudd) is in a dead end job shilling energy drinks to school kids as an antidote to drugs. He shares this job with Wheeler (Seann William Scott) who quite to the contrary finds the gig a dream vocation. When Danny gets rejected by his upwardly mobile girlfriend Beth (Elizabeth Banks who is ...

I've Loved You For So Long

November 7th, 2008
I've Loved You For So Long is much loved in Vancouver as it was voted most popular film at this years Vancouver international Film Festival. Kristin Scott Thomas is superbly subtle as Juliette Fontaine a withdrawn woman just reunited after 15 years with her saintly sister Lea (Elsa Zylberstein). As the layers of Juliete’s shell are slowly peeled away we discover the reason for the separation, ...
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