Gleason scores, Anthropoid kills, Bad Moms just bad
Home Entertainment: November 1, 2016
Justin Lin puts Star Trek franchise into hyperdrive but fails to engage mental engines but there's plenty of other stars to check out on home platforms this week
By Katherine Monk
Star Trek Beyond (Directed by: Justin Lin, Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg) 2.5/5: I wanted to love Star Trek Beyond as much as I enjoyed the other two reboots from mastermind J.J. Abrams, and yet, despite my ample enthusiasm for a franchise that puts friendship and humanity first, this third film starring Chris Pine as James T. Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Mr. Spock failed to make it out of the transporter room in one piece. There are many reasons why Beyond falls from a high orbit, but the most noticeable is the name on the director’s chair. Abrams was busy helming that other sci-fi juggernaut, leaving the Fast and the Furious’s Justin Lin to assemble the pieces and play the cosmic strings. Lin is good at car crashes and man bonding, ...
Konelïne drills deep into the dark heart of colonialism
Movies: Available Light Film Festival
Veteran documentary filmmaker Nettie Wild heads North to explore a motherlode of ugly conflict unfolding against a backdrop of pristine beauty in her latest film, Konelïne: Our Land Beautiful
By Katherine Monk
(Feb. 8, 2016. Updated Oct. 29, 2016) WHITEHORSE, YUKON — “We didn’t want it. We still don’t want it. But it was a done deal when they called us to the table.” Tahltan elder Lillian Moyer was speaking about a transmission line along the once-scenic Highway 37 in Canada’s Yukon, but the comments she uttered at the premiere of Nettie Wild’s latest documentary, Konelïne - Our land Beautiful, seem applicable to just about every situation that pits traditional First Nations’ values against the continuing colonial reality. From resource extraction in pristine wildlife habitats in the North to condos and casinos on traditional lands in the South, Canada’s colonial history clearly didn’t end with when Europeans left the ...
Inferno: To Hell and Back
Movie review: Inferno
Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones get lost in a sea of attractive scenery and classical references in Ron Howard's decryption of Dante's Divine Comedy
Jack Reacher comes up short
Movie review: Jack Reacher
Tom Cruise returns as the peripatetic vigilante in a straightforward, if preposterous, adventure whose simplicity reveals how unsuitable the actor is for the role
Margie Gillis moves through it
Dance: Pearl - The Show, Queen Elizabeth Theatre Oct. 27, 28
The Canadian dance icon digs deep in a new show that pays tribute to the Pulitzer-winning author of The Good Earth, but that's just the beginning of Margie Gillis's bid to help us 'reincorporate' and find our inner Pearl By Katherine Monk
(October 24, 2016) VANCOUVER – Dance icon Margie Gillis has many honours to pin on her lapels: Officer of the Order of Canada, Knight of the National Order of Quebec, Lifetime Achievement honoree at the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards and the first-ever winner of the Stella Adler Studio’s MAD Spirit Award. Yet, there’s one credit she’s particularly proud of, though it features no hardware, prize money or resume-worthy mention. “I was listed as one of the reasons why the Sun News Network failed,” says Gillis over a requisite latte in Vancouver Monday. In town for a two-night performance of Pearl, a “Broadway-style” production that celebrates the life and work ...
Tom Cruise on tiptoe as Jack Reacher
Movie review - Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Looking to reaffirm his brand as an All-American action hero, Tom Cruise reboots Lee Child's franchise about an ex-military cop who operates outside the law to settle ugly scores
Eye candy helps Keeping Up with the Joneses
Movie review: Keeping Up with the Joneses
Superbad director Greg Mottola uses action and espionage to pimp out a minivan of a comic premise that seeks to cross the median income divide
Life, death and Andrew Huculiak
People: Interview with Andrew Huculiak
Getting metaphysical with the first-time director of Violent means dipping a big toe into the cold, dark waters of existentialism and cozying up with Kierkegaard
By Katherine Monk
(October 19, 2016) VANCOUVER – A gentle drizzle falls outside, and the faint smell of woolly dampness mingles with the scent of fresh pie. It’s a typical fall day in Vancouver -- wet, dark, and cool -- the perfect backdrop for an interview with Andrew Huculiak. Huculiak is the director behind Violent, easily one of the best first features in Canadian film history, but up until now, it was also one of the most difficult to access. Shot two years ago in Norway with a unilingual Norwegian cast, Violent was invited to Cannes, picked up top prizes at The Vancouver International Film Festival and was shortlisted as Canada’s best foreign film Oscar submission. By all accounts and measures, it should have hit theatres nationwide. Yet, it’s only now, two years later ...
Violent finds eerie beauty in the abyss
Movie review: Violent
Andrew Huculiak's debut feature is a stunning mediation on the meaning of life that owes as much to Alfred Hitchcock as it does to Terrence Malick in its bid to open our eyes to existence
An okay film, Unless you read the book
Movie review: Unless
This disappointing film adaptation of Carol Shields' final novel turns a meditation on who we are into a melodramatic puzzle with a conventional solution
