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
Movie review: I Am Not Your Negro is stunning
Movie Review: I Am Not Your Negro
The words of the late James Baldwin provide a searing portrait of race relations in the United States, and prove how little things have changed in the decades since they were written
Song to Song falls flat
Movie Review: Song to Song
Terrence Malick probes the nature of intimacy through a portrait of Austin's music scene, but the existential maestro fails to find the right notes in this hollow solo
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...
Screwing up his courage for The Second Time Around
People: Leon Marr
Talking about sex and the seniors' residence with the director of The Second Time Around, a new movie that tackles taboo and takes us into the boudoir with tenderness, patience and operatic ambition
By Katherine Monk
(April 3, 3017) -- The Centers for Disease Control declared April STD awareness month, which means there’s no better time for the release of The Second Time Around. It’s a new feature film by Leon Marr after a decades-long hiatus, and while it’s not about sexually transmitted disease – at all – it does focus on a demographic with an increasing transmission rate: senior citizens. The CDC suggests the aging baby boomers are making the most out of their senior years, if the steady rise in syphilis cases among those over 65 is any indication: between 2007 and 2011, researchers noted a rise of 52 per cent. Part of it has to do with taboos surrounding sex in the golden years. It’s not something society talks about all that often ...
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 Promise not worth keeping
#TIFF16: Critic's Dispatches
A bad old-fashioned historical drama about the Armenian genocide revisits final days of Ottoman Empire while La La Land and few gin and gingers quench artistic thirst
By Jay Stone
TORONTO — They threw a party last night at the Toronto International Film Festival where they served a delicious drink made of gin and ginger ale, and you could have as many as you want. When I regained consciousness, it was time for The Promise, a bad old-fashioned historical drama in which the troubles of three little people — in this case, an Armenian apothecary (Oscar Isaac), a comely dance teacher (Charlotte Le Bon) and an American journalist (Christian Bale) — don’t amount to a hill of beans when they’re cast across the vast and clichéd canvas of tragedy during the First World War. Fusillades of exposition fly across the screen, capturing our doomed heroes in a crossfire of clunky dialogue, tired movie tropes, and earnest over-acting. Pass the gin and ...
Seeking inspiration in the Big Smoke
#TIFF 16: Critic's Dispatches
Damien Chazelle's La La Land offers a deep breath filled with human notes in an urban landscape where the creative urge is often filtered and conditioned for comfort
By Katherine Monk
TORONTO — The condo tower I’m staying at affords me a view of downtown Toronto’s rooftops: squares and rectangles carving their way into the horizontal blue line of Lake Ontario. Sheer glass and steel boxes topped with trailing steel tubes that allow sealed office buildings to breathe. Inspiration, mechanized. It’s a necessity in an urban landscape that denies human scale, and emotionally speaking, all things human. But I didn’t even notice the ambient drone of a thousand HVAC fans whirring away over the Big Smoke until today — until I saw Damien Chazelle’s La La Land and rediscovered what true inspiration really feels like: A deep breath exhaled as song. Sure, La La Land had already been touted as the big buzz movie at this year’s Toronto ...
Three at-bats, but no TIFF hits on this day in cinema sports
#TIFF16: Critic's Dispatches
Seasoned critic sacrifices a Blue Jays game to take in The Queen of Katwe, Planetarium and The Bleeder but finds little to celebrate beyond a sweet mid-movie slumber
By Jay Stone
TORONTO — I went to three films today, which means I didn’t get to watch the Toronto Blue Jays game on television. The films weren’t great as cinema, but they were excellent as distractions from the Toronto Blue Jays. For the record, the Boston Red Sox beat the Jays 11-8, and I went 0-for-3. The first movie was The Queen of Katwe, a Disney movie based on a true story about a teenage Ugandan girl who lives in dire poverty on the bad side of a small African village — mud streets, bare shacks, a cacophony of people trying to sell maize to people in cars stuck in monumental traffic jams at red lights — and becomes a chess champion. Yes, it’s that movie, which suited my fellow movie-goers to a T. They laughed and applauded on cue, which makes me think The Queen ...
