MOVIES

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This article was published 18/01/2015 (4229 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AMERICAN SNIPER

Grant Park, Kildonan Place, McGillivray, McGillivray VIP, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 14A. 133 minutes.

Bradley Cooper portrays the U.S. navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the “deadliest sniper in U.S. history” in this drama directed by Clint Eastwood. The story is very much in Eastwood’s wheelhouse, springing from his career as an actor portraying a gallery of mythic heroes, and then as a director, deconstructing those figures to reveal tortured flesh-and-blood men. Kyle, whose reputation for heroism and his outsize tally of kills during the war in Iraq earned him the sobriquet “Legend,” is an Eastwoodian hero if there ever was one. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö 1/2

ANNIE

Polo Park, Towne. G. 118 minutes.

In this remake of the 1982 musical, Quvenzhané Wallis reinvents the red-headed orphan of comic strip fame, and Jamie Foxx does Daddy Warbucks Version 2.0, a rich New York political candidate named Will Stacks. The new version is intimate and hip, sarcastic and flip, but staggers through its third act by which time the script has rubbed the rough edges off the villains (Cameron Diaz and Bobby Cannavale) and made whatever point it was going to make several times over. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö (Reviewed by Roger Moore)

BIG HERO 6

Polo Park. G. 102 minutes.

A young inventor employs his brother’s inflatable medi-robot to track the kabuki-masked fiend who stole his micro-robot technology in this animated Disney adventure. A mash-up of superhero movie and Disney animation pales in comparison with the precedent of The Incredibles, but it has a bit of charm and an interesting fusion of Marvel tropes and anime esthetics. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö

BLACKHAT

Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, Towne. 14A. 134 minutes.

An imprisoned computer hacker (Chris Hemsworth) barters his expertise for his freedom in a cyber-thriller that arrives in theatres at an interesting moment when both cyberterrorism and just plain terrorism have been page-one news over the past few weeks. It speaks to the disappointing quality of the film that the movie fails to register as either topical or realistic. Maybe that’s what happens when you cast Chris Hemsworth as a computer geek. ‘Ö’Ö

FM YOUTH

Cinematheque. 14A. 78 minutes.

Three friends bicycle around St. Boniface the day before two of them are planning to leave their Franco-Manitoban community to head to Montreal in this lo-fi, impressively atmospheric debut feature by Stéphane Oystryk. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö

FOXCATCHER

Grant Park. PG. 135 minutes.

Director Bennett Miller, who combined true crime and real-life celebrity in Capote, explores that dynamic again with the true story of insane millionaire John du Pont (Steve Carell) and his tragic relationship with fraternal Olympian wrestlers Mark (Channing Tatum) and Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo). ‘Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö

THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES

Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, Polo Park Imax, St. Vital, Towne. PG. 144 minutes.

Peter Jackson’s long kiss good night to Middle-earth wraps up with a somewhat chaotic but satisfying conclusion as Bilbo (Martin Freeman) prevails on the gold-/power-hungry Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) to come back from the edge of madness. A brisk pace compensates for the deficits of the first movie and interlocks effectively with the Lord of the Rings trilogy to come (chronologically speaking). If the spun-out yarn lacks the greatness of LOTR, it’s a satisfying wrap-up. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö 1/2

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 1

Polo Park, St. Vital. PG. 123 minutes.

The games are over but the war has begun as champion Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) emerges as a symbol of the resistance to the tyranny of President Snow (Donald Sutherland). You have to give credit to the way the film addresses the issue of propaganda, but the big problem in this penultimate episode to the Hunger Games saga is it never feels like a real movie so much as a chapter in a serial. Let the Games end already. ‘Ö’Ö

THE IMITATION GAME

Grant Park, McGillivray, McGillivray VIP, Polo Park. PG. 115 minutes.

Benedict Cumberbatch gets his best screen role as Alan Turing, the genius credited with breaking the Germans’ Enigma code during the Second World War (as well as being the father of the computer), but who found himself being harassed after the war due to his homosexuality. The shocking story is told in a sombre but dramatically devastating fashion by director Morten Tyldum. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö

INHERENT VICE

Grant Park. 18A. 149 minutes.

Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master) offers up a long, strange trip into the private-eye genre with this adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel starring Joaquin Phoenix as Doc Sportello, a hippie shamus attempting to get to the bottom of his ex-girlfriend’s disappearance in L.A., circa 1970. Fitfully amusing, it’s a movie to try your patience when it comes to a coherent narrative thread, a commodity usually pretty essential in a mystery story, no matter how subversive its intent. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö

INTO THE WOODS

Grant Park, Polo Park, St. Vital. PG. 125 minutes.

Long before Hollywood started the fairy-tale-with-a-twist thing, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine did it on Broadway in 1986, and did it really well, with their musical combining the innocence of the fairy tale with an overlay of bitter life experience. This movie version directed by Rob Marshall translates it succinctly to screen, cannily casting musical vets (Anna Kendrick, James Corben), revered thespians (Meryl Streep) and just plain movie stars (Johnny Depp and Chris Pine) to the desired effect. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 3: SECRET OF THE TOMB

McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG. 98 minutes.

Ben Stiller plays a museum security guard attempting to preserve the magic that enables the exhibits to come to life each sundown in this third entry of the franchise, notable as the studio-movie swan song for both Robin Williams and Mickey Rooney. Minor moments of slapstick may tickle the kids, but anybody older, especially those who remember what Williams was like in his prime and how funny Stiller was just two Museum movies ago, will wish this tomb had stayed sealed. ‘Ö’Ö (Reviewed by Roger Moore)

PADDINGTON

Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. G. 96 minutes.

Based on the beloved children’s books comes this movie about the adventures of a civilized young bear from “Darkest Peru” who comes to London in search of a new life. A tentative adoption by a safety-obsessed patriarch (Hugh Bonneville) helps until our hero becomes an ursine of interest to a wicked taxidermist (Nicole Kidman). The animation effects may be state-of-the-art, but this is disarmingly charming and very much in the tradition of your more eccentric English family entertainments. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö 1/2

THE PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR

St. Vital. G. 92 minutes.

This animated feature spotlights those can-do Spheniscidae from the Madagascar movies — Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private — as they team with secret organization the North Wind, led by the canine Agent Classified (Benedict Cumberbatch), to stop a mad octopus intent on ridding the world of penguin-y cuteness. If the Madagascar movies seem to have run their course (and even the penguins herein admit they’re getting darn sick of that I Like to Move It song), this offshoot takes a diverting path into more fantastical spy-movie territory, with an abundance of nice sight gags and a plethora of groan-inducing puns (the best kind). ‘Ö’Ö’Ö

SELMA

Grant Park, Polo Park. PG. 128 minutes.

This pertinent drama examines the grim political realities that led to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965. Director Ava DuVernay maintains a difficult balance between human drama and its historic context, anchored by a quietly dignified performance by David Oyelowo as King. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö’Ö

TAKEN 3

Grant Park, Kildonan Place, McGillivray, McGillivray VIP, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 14A. 109 minutes.

A former covert op (Liam Neeson), framed for the murder of his ex-wife, employs his particular set of skills against the conspirators responsible. Neeson’s character brings nothing new to the predictable franchise. While this third instalment offers more humour (mostly unintentional), the action scenes are disjointed, badly staged and mind-numbing. If you’ve seen Taken or Taken 2, you’ve already been taken, and there’s not much different here. ‘Ö (Reviewed by Claudia Puig)

UNBROKEN

Polo Park, St. Vital. PG. 138 minutes.

Angelina Jolie’s film about Olympian/Japanese prison camp survivor Louis Zamperini (Jack O’Connell) tumbles into most every prisoner-of-war movie cliché in ways that suggest Jolie hasn’t figured out how these things work. Suspense and pathos evade her as she turns an admittedly unwieldy biography into a dull, perfunctory and truncated film. ‘Ö’Ö (Reviewed by Roger Moore)

THE WEDDING RINGER

Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 14A. 101 minutes.

Kevin Hart plays a best man for hire who comes to the aid of a friend-challenged nebbish (Josh Gad) on the eve of his wedding. Call it a Hangover Lite that softens manic funnyman Kevin Hart’s persona into someone almost as funny, but more sentimental than abrasive. That helps Ringer work as a bromantic comedy that feels like a romantic comedy. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö (Reviewed by Roger Moore)

WOMAN IN BLACK 2: ANGEL OF DEATH

Polo Park, Towne. 14A. 98 minutes.

The child-murdering spirit of Eel Marsh House is re-awakened 40 years after the events of the first movie upon the arrival of children evacuated from London during the Second World War. Starring Phoebe Fox and Jeremy Irvine, this is a deathly dull affair, a pointless, passionless ghost-story sequel that lacks the one big thing the original film’s star Daniel Radcliffe provided — empathy. ‘Ö 1/2 (Reviewed by Roger Moore)

WILD

Grant Park. 14A. 112 minutes.

Reese Witherspoon plays troubled long-distance hiker Cheryl Strayed, contemplating her oft-misspent life during the course of a gruelling 1,600-kilometre journey on foot. Quebec director Jean-Marc Vallée, who essayed a similar transformative character study in last year’s Dallas Buyers Club, combines his considerable filmmaking talents with a bluntly honest approach to his troubled heroes. For her part, Witherspoon takes up the challenge with admirable courage, despite the fact she is somewhat miscast. And as the film’s producer, she has no one to blame for that but herself. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö 1/2