Loving the Alien
Movie Review - Alien: Covenant
Ridley Scott gestates another fiendish fetus in the continuing Alien saga, yet for all the blood, gore and acid burns, Covenant leaves a gaping hole
Norman finds second Gere
Movie review: Norman
Taking on the role of a New York fixer in Joseph Cedar's modern iteration of the 'Court Jew' archetype, Richard Gere proves he's capable of suppressing his sexiness in service to a worthy, if pathetic, cause
Linda Thorson: Ready for her close-up
People: Linda Thorson
After a career that bathed her in the London limelight, the Canadian actress who replaced Diana Rigg on The Avengers makes a homecoming in her first starring role as an icy Ontario matron in The Second Time Around
By Katherine Monk
“Never a dull moment.” For Linda Thorson, it’s more than a life motto. It’s an existential promise. The Toronto-born actor crafted a career on British stage and television after replacing Diana Rigg on The Avengers, but the life adventure just keeps going. Thorson has a new boyfriend, and after five decades in the business, her first starring role in a feature film. Thorson plays Katherine, an uptight, opera-loving matron who finds love in a seniors’ home in The Second Time Around, a new movie from Leon Marr that recently picked up the audience award at The Palm Beach film festival. Currently on the Canadian art house circuit with stops in Vancouver and Montreal, The Second Time Around tells the story of Kather...
The Boss Baby demands your attention
Movie Review: The Boss Baby
Alec Baldwin scales down his 30 Rock character to a pint-sized power broker looking to put puppies in their place and pad the bottom line for infants everywhere in The Boss Baby
The Last Word chokes on phoney tone
Movie review: The Last Word
Shirley MacLaine and Amanda Seyfried chew through some overcooked dialogue and brittle character details to masticate the most out of a forced dynamic between a control freak facing the final chapter and a cynical obituary writer
Kong: Skull Island reveals origin of the species
Movie Review: Kong - Skull Island
The oversized ape makes a spectacular return in this big-budget B-movie that tries to plumb the depths of the American psyche but ends up playing in a muddy puddle
Split never comes together
Movie review: Split
James McAvoy's over-the-top performance as a man with multiple personalities lends M. Night Shyamalan's tediously self-conscious thriller a hint of fun
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
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 ...
