Big fish is easily the most personal and mature film Tim Burton has made in years. It is also one of those films that manages to be both sad and uplifting at the same time — uplifting, because it points to a profound truth, but sad, because it offers no basis for that truth; beneath […]
Cheaper by the Dozen
Bonnie Hunt, who has often played the mother, big sister, or best friend in films like Beethoven, Jerry Maguire and her own directorial debut Return to Me, is such a charming, winning actress and comedian that you want her movies to do well. Alas, Cheaper by the Dozen, in which she plays the wife of […]
The Barbarian Invasions, The Event, My Life Without Me – 3 Canadian Films
Alas, technical problems and a crowded schedule prevented me from posting regular updates during the Vancouver film festival like I had hoped. But now that the festival has come and gone — and now that some of the films showcased there are opening in regular theatres — it is possible to comment on some of […]
The Fighting Temptations
Hollywood studios usually don’t pay much attention to Christian audiences, so it’s always a little flattering when one of them tries to curry our favour. But to judge from some of the films they send our way, they still don’t understand us very well. The latest case in point: The Fighting Temptations. Paramount Pictures seems […]
Evelyn
There once was a time, roughly 20 years ago, when Australian director Bruce Beresford was associated with powerful political and spiritual dramas like Breaker Morant and Tender Mercies. But lately, his films have been far less challenging. When he isn’t making a boilerplate revenge thriller like Double Jeapordy, Beresford tends to make smaller films, often […]
About a Boy
Every story worth telling is ultimately about a girl, says Peter Parker in Spider-Man, but the makers of Hugh Grant’s latest star vehicle, About a Boy, might disagree. Yes, the film, which is already a hit in England, stars Grant — in his best role since Four Weddings and a Funeral — as yet another […]
John Q
There is no movie so bad it can’t be at least partially redeemed by Denzel Washington. Take John Q. The film is an extremely timely thriller about health care and the difficulties faced by those who cannot afford it, but it is also one of those shamelessly manipulative social dramas in which nearly everything is […]
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and his friends may soar through the air on broomsticks and dangle from flying cars in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the latest chapter in J.K. Rowling’s ongoing saga about a young orphan and his classmates at a boarding school for witches and wizards, but the film itself never takes flight […]
Divided We Fall
Funny, dramatic and surprisingly poignant, Divided We Fall is one of the most oddly engaging stories about life under the Nazis in recent memory. This Oscar-nominated Czech film — now playing in Vancouver theatres, and soon coming out on video — focuses on Horst (Jaroslav Dusek) and Josef (Bolek Polivka), two Czechoslovakians who work for […]
Waking Life
Remember Generation X? Douglas Coupland once traced the origins of that short-lived bit of media hype to three items that appeared on the pop culture scene within months of each other in 1991: his own book by that name, Nirvana’s album Nevermind, and Slacker, a film by Richard Linklater. In Slacker, Linklater drifted from one […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- Next Page »