MOVIES

Enlarge Image

Movie newcomer Jared Gilman stars as Sam in Wes Anderson�s Moonrise Kingdom. (POSTMEDIA)

THE AVENGERS

Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG

Superhero franchises assemble! This witty, thrilling comic book movie from writer-director Joss Whedon elegantly combines four existing Marvel movie franchises -- Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans) and The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) -- for an action spectacle that still manages to be smart and savvy. 'Ö'Ö'Ö'Ö

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

Globe. PG

The cream of elder English actors (Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson) play retirees who travel to India to take up residence in what they believe is a newly restored hotel, only to discover their new home is less luxurious than advertised. This movie would have been little more than an episode of Fantasy Island with English accents, but thanks to great detail work from the cast and a gentle hand from director John Madden, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel proves you're never too old to bloom. 'Ö'Ö'Ö (Reviewed by Katherine Monk)

CHERNOBYL DIARIES

Polo Park. 14A

A group of American tourists takes a trip to the radioactive wasteland surrounding the Ukrainian disaster site where they encounter threats not commonly found in nature. While the idea of an abandoned city and unchecked genetic mutation has promise, this low-budget effort amounts to endless shots of jiggling flashlights in the darkness and shadowy figures emerging from faux fog. 'Ö1/2 (Reviewed by Katherine Monk)

COSMOPOLIS

Grant Park. 14A

Dreamboat actor Robert Pattinson shifts gears as a young billionaire largely confined to a luxury limousine crawling its way through New York streets on a weird obsessive mission to get his hair cut at his old neighbourhood barber shop. Director David Cronenberg has fared better filming supposedly unfilmable novels such as Naked Lunch and Crash because of his willingness to inject his own creative DNA into the projects. But this feels more like an exercise in cinematic transcription of Don DeLillo's cult novel. The actors do what they can, and Pattinson's efforts are heroic, but this remains a movie without a real life of its own. 'Ö'Ö1/2

DARK SHADOWS

Polo Park. 14A

The Gothic soap opera of the '60s gets cinematic courtesy of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, who plays Barnabas Collins, an 18th-century vampire released from entombment to reunite with the Collins clan in the future wonderworld of 1972. The movie's best comedy is purely visual. Blocking actors in soap opera style gives Burton the opportunity to pose his cast like figures from an Edward Gorey storybook in a perverse blend of Gothic with macramé owls, beanbag chairs and shag carpeting: Kitsch relics dwelling among the kitsch relics. 'Ö'Ö'Ö

THE DEEP BLUE SEA

Globe. PG

Terence Davies adapts Terence Rattigan's stage play starring Rachel Weisz is the wife of a high court judge in 1950s London who chucks it all to move in with the young RAF pilot (Tom Hiddleston) with whom she has fallen in love. Beautifully photographed and directed, Davies evokes all the desperation and romance of the era. 'Ö'Ö'Ö1/2 (Reviewed by Katherine Monk)

THE DICTATOR

Polo Park, St. Vital. 14A

Sacha Baron Cohen plays Gen. Admiral Haffaz Aladeen, the titular despot of the North African country Wadiya, who finds himself beardless and alone in New York after his uncle (Ben Kingsley) stages a coup. Cohen displays the chutzpah of Borat and director Larry Charles (Religulous) offers up satire with teeth, yet the movie is as impossible to love as the hateful character of the title. 'Ö'Ö1/2

FORKS OVER KNIVES

Cinematheque. G

A food documentary that doesn't wave its revolutionary flag around in the fashion of some increasingly tiresome cinematic doc-iconoclasts. (We're looking at you, Morgan Spurlock.) But it does have the potency of a quiet revolution in its thesis that a global health crisis could be averted if people eschewed meat and animal products in favour of chewing vegetables and whole foods. 'Ö'Ö'Ö1/2

MADAGASCAR 3: EUROPE'S MOST WANTED

Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. G

An animated film that's vertiginous, explosive, ridiculous, frantic and anti-Canadian (they joke about our "work ethic.") Inspired 3-D and non-stop silliness make this the most fun you can have at the movies so far this summer. 'Ö'Ö'Ö'Ö (Reviewed by Jay Stone)

MARINA ABRAMOVIC: THE ARTIST IS PRESENT

Globe. 14A

Matthew Akers directs this documentary portrait of the Serbian performance artist as she stages her first major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. While the movie maintains an unspoken reverence for its subject, it also helps us understand her work by immersing us in the experience -- as well as the mindset. Always interesting, regardless of what you think of the art itself, the doc offers an elegant poem spoken entirely in body language. 'Ö'Ö'Ö1/2 (Reviewed by Katherine Monk)

MEN IN BLACK 3

Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG

Will Smith rejoins the summer movie circus in this franchise entry featuring a time-travel plot, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin as a much younger, '60s-era Tommy Lee Jones. It may come in 3-D, but this is very much the same eccentric, wide-angle approach as the previous entries, with the added value of Brolin's comic flair in a deft impersonation of Jones. 'Ö'Ö'Ö

MOONRISE KINGDOM

Polo Park. PG

Wes Anderson's latest follows a pair of young teen runaways (Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman) in love, tracing the ripples of their blossoming, forbidden love affair among a scout leader (Edward Norton), a lonesome lawman (Bruce Willis) and the girl's bickering lawyer parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand). In the foreground, the movie is a celebration of youthful passion and purpose, but lurking behind that, the adults in the cast offer a wistful, sad forecast of estrangement, doubt and compromise to come. 'Ö'Ö'Ö'Ö

PROMETHEUS

Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, Polo Park IMAX, St. Vital, Towne. 14A

Director Ridley Scott returns to the sci-fi realm that put him on the map, culture-wise, with this prequel to Alien in which a space crew (including Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender) travel to a distant planet that promises to explain the source of humanity. It may lack Alien's primal terror and no-frills narrative, but it is weirdly rich in biblical imagery and tantalizing subtext, enough to justify a second viewing. 'Ö'Ö'Ö'Ö

ROCK OF AGES

Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital. PG

The Broadway jukebox musical plays the rock anthem hits of the '80s against a backdrop of a tawdry, on-the-edge-of-bankruptcy club where rock god Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) has scheduled his band's last gig and a couple of young musicians (Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta) are falling in love. Rock of Ages is not so much an organic movie musical but a calculated two-pronged effort to grab a demographic of middle-aged former metalheads and Glee fans. Yet it is not without its unlikely pleasures, including Cruise bringing his star quality to bear on the dissipated rock god. 'Ö'Ö1/2

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN

Grant Park, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG

The storybook heroine Snow White (Kristen Stewart) gets made over as a kick-ass warrior princess taking arms against an evil queen (Charlize Theron) with the aid of the huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) who has been assigned the task of killing her. The sombre Lord of the Rings-meets-The Brothers Grimm tone is preferable to earlier ninny burlesque Mirror Mirror, but the pace is cumbersome and Kristen Stewart lacks both the classical beauty and the gravitas to qualify as the fairest of them all... although we might accept her as the fairest of the mall. 'Ö'Ö'Ö

SOUND IT OUT

Cinematheque. G

This portrait of the very last surviving vinyl record shop in Teesside, England from director Jeanie Finlay, suggests the act of running this particular store is a heroic pursuit. In the age of the anonymous digital download, the outlet is a social centre, obliging its loner customers to go out into the world to hook up with the music they love. 'Ö'Ö'Ö1/2

THAT'S MY BOY

Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 18A

Adam Sandler's new movie is a gross-out comedy of witless penis and poop jokes that nonetheless seems to delight his fans. He plays a wasted man who had a son from an affair with his junior high teacher and now wants to reunite with him. The idea of child abuse is just one of the gags. 'Ö (Reviewed by Jay Stone)

WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU'RE EXPECTING

Polo Park, St. Vital. PG

A painful multi-plotted comedy-drama about four women (Elizabeth Banks, Jennifer Lopez, Cameron Diaz, Anna Kendrick) and their rocky journey to motherhood, adapted from the best-selling guide of the same name. For a movie that tries so hard to click with audiences based on common human experience, this is a weirdly alienating ordeal. 'Ö1/2

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 17, 2012 A13