3.5Score

The Founder’s quarter-pounder of thought

Movie review: The Founder The American Dream comes in a convenient package that's ready to eat as John Lee Hancock finds the beef in The McDonald's Empire
2.5Score

Movie review: Split is divided against itself

M. Night Shyamalan's latest adventure in psychological horror — about a kidnapper with 23 different personae living inside him — is itself a victim of a split personality disorder
4Score

Julieta is a thing of beauty

Movie review: Julieta Pedro Almodóvar's 20th feature film finds female beauty deep within the creases of profound loss as we watch two women bear the burden of being Julieta

Hit your mental reset button with a sweet green smoothie

Recipe: Reset Button Green Smoothie A spritely emerald green, this smoothie is packed with kale and spinach, but sweetened naturally with pear, banana and pineapple, so as good as it is for you, it doesn’t taste like medicine. By Louise Crosby (January 16, 2017) If you’re anything like me, you’ll be glad that all that holiday business is behind us and we can get on with ordinary life. Downtime is good, bingeing on movies is fun, but there comes a time when you need activity and structure to your day. It lifts your spirits. And if you roared in to January with a new resolve to be healthier and more physically fit, then this smoothie is for you. It’s from Angela Liddon’s second book, Oh She Glows Everyday. (Her first, The Oh She Glows Cookbook, was wildly successful.) A spritely emerald green, this drink is packed with kale and spinach, but sweetened naturally with pear, banana and pineapple, so as good as it is for you, it doesn’t taste like medicine. Liddon, ...
4Score

Movie review: 20th Century Women a wise comedy

A teenage boy in 1970s California is raised by three women at different stages of their lives in a coming-of-age story with a loopy feminist edge

Hidden Figures blasts into racist past

Movie Review: Hidden Figures Theodore Melfi's quest for the stars has all the rights cogs and gears as it features Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer as Janelle Monáe mathemeticians playing a big role in the early days of NASA, but even with Kevin Costner's booster rocket, the voyage feels mechanical
4.5Score

La La Land is where love and art tangle

Movie review: La La Land This musical love letter to the movie business, jazz and romance is an intoxicating throwback to the days of dancing among the stars and singing your heart out in the hopes of making it  

Bringing up Babies: Top Ten movies of 2016

Movies: Top Ten 2016 Some say Donald Trump won the Presidency playing to childish insecurity and name-calling, but the annual box-office derby also proved a public appetite for adolescent entertainments. Film Critic Katherine Monk breaks down the top-ten money earners, and offers her own take on the year's best. By Katherine Monk (Published Jan. 2, 2017) The political arena wasn’t the only place where childhood behaviours prevailed in 2016. Movie theatres also played to our apparent desire for less-sophisticated, over-simplified entertainments. It was the year the Mouse House roared: The Walt Disney Company was responsible for five of the year’s top ten earners worldwide, for a record haul of $4.829 billion - just a little under half the cumulative worldwide gross of $11.3 billion. Disney raced to the pinnacle of a relatively static box-office heap with titles that included the top-earning Captain America: Civil War ($1.153B), Finding Dory ($1.027B), Zootopia ($1.023B), The ...
4Score

Little Lion has a big roar

Movie review: Lion Dev Patel and Sunny Pawar bring the true story of Saroo Brierley's quest for home to the big screen with empathy and intimate emotional truth

Cohen, Prince, Bowie and now… Comparelli

Tribute: R.I.P. Peter Comparelli A fellow scribe remembers the good old days when journalists spoke truth to power, a per diem could get you drunk and a guy named Peter Comparelli backstopped the labour beat By Rod Mickleburgh It has been a terrible year. Bowie and Prince taken far too early. Leonard Cohen leaving us to mourn and light candles against the dark. Long-time friends battling serious health issues. Fake news, the decline of newspapers and the mainstream media, more necessary than ever to hold governments and politicians to account. An antiquated electoral system, an FBI “announcement coup” against Hillary Clinton and Russian hackers delivering a sniveling, bullying, thin-skinned, shallow-thinking prima-donna with the attention span of a child to the White House, while the most adult of U.S. presidents takes his dignified leave. Terrorism in Europe. Aleppo. And now, to cap off this annus horribilis came news of the passing of Peter Comparelli, as lovely a person as ...