February 10, 2011: The Kids are All Right The Kids are All Right seemed to capture the mood of a lot of people and the state of society last year, with its raw and emotional portrayal of a middle-aged lesbian couple dealing with their kids growing up, and it absolutely is a big step forward [...]
February 9, 2011: Incendies Canada’s Oscar-nominated entry for Best Foreign Language Film is a gripping and heartbreaking story of a woman’s children forced to come to terms with her past, after she is gone. Incendies is nicely structured, keeps its audience guessing, and delivers a devastating revelation at the end. I found it to be [...]
February 8, 2011: How to Train Your Dragon How to Train Your Dragon is an animated film about a remote Viking community hundreds of years ago, plagued by constant dragon attacks. For generations, youngsters have been trained as warriors, to kill dragons in battle. One meek and gentle kid, whose father happens to be one [...]
February 8, 2011: The Dilemma Oscar season this year coincided with cereal-box movie passes, and I’m not one to turn down cheap or essentially “free” first-run movies (I eat the cereal), even if I am in the middle of a desperate campaign to see the 40-odd Oscar nominated films. Being generally a fan of Vince [...]
February 7, 2011: The Way Back With an Oscar nomination for its makeup, I was compelled to see The Way Back this month, but I wanted to see it anyway. An interpretation of the true-life story of a group of prisoners of war during the second world war who escaped from a prison camp in [...]
February 6, 2011: Alice in Wonderland The combination of Disney and Tim Burton seems to result in something tremendous to look at, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. With his usual muses Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter on board, Burton gives us his odd take on the Lewis Carroll story, a warped [...]
February 4, 2011: Salt I had considered watching Salt but might not have bothered immediately if not for the Oscar nomination for Sound Mixing. Angelina Jolie seems to be starring in ever more unlikely thrillers and actioners, and Salt pushes the boundaries of plausibility far past anything the viewer can reasonably be expected to forgive, [...]
February 2, 2011: Unstoppable I watched Unstoppable, technically, because of its Oscar nomination for Sound Editing, but I was interested in seeing it before that nomination forced my hand. On the surface it was likely to be simply another hyperactive and overwrought Tony Scott action film, but it reviewed well during its theatrical run and [...]
February 2, 2011: Groundhog Day With a snow day declared in Toronto and the whole family home for the day on February 2, was there really any option other than to watch Groundhog Day? This 1993 Harold Ramis film depicts Bill Murray re-living the same day over and over again, without any idea of what [...]
February 1, 2011: The Fighter How do you know when or whether someone has recovered and is ready to be trusted again? With some people, there’s a question of whether they can or will ever again be worth taking a chance on. The Fighter, based on a true-life story, illustrates how families wrestle with that [...]