MOVIES

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This article was published 07/12/2014 (3982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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The following movies have been previously reviewed by Free Press movie critic Randall King, unless otherwise noted.

 

BIG HERO 6

Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 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 to the precedent of The Incredibles, but it has a bit of charm and an interesting fusion of Marvel tropes and anime esthetics. ***

 

BIRDMAN

Grant Park. 14A. 119 minutes.

A washed up movie star (Michael Keaton), best known for a masked superhero he played decades earlier, tries to mount a Broadway drama in a desperate bid to reclaim the career and family he lost. It’s a role Keaton had to become a has-been to play and his performance is riveting, hilarious, intimate and larger-than-life. ***** (Reviewed by Roger Moore)

 

CITIZENFOUR

Grant Park, McGillivray. PG. 114 minutes.

This riveting documentary by Laura Poitras offers an inside look at the saga of NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden as it unfolded, with Poitras and reporters Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill flying to Hong Kong to meet with Snowden and hear about his astonishing revelations regarding the extent of American covert surveillance. Whether you think Snowden is a hero or a traitor, you should see this film to get to know him a little better. **** (Reviewed by Ann Hornaday)

 

CORNER GAS: THE MOVIE

Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG. 110 minutes.

This feature-length return to Dog River has Brent Leroy (Brent Butt), Lacey (Gabrielle Miller), Hank (Fred Ewanuick) and the gang trying to save their town after it declares bankruptcy. The feature length is an awkward fit for a show that was always delivered in half-hour increments, but it’s still good to be back in the eccentric Saskatchewan community. Lorne Cardinal is especially funny as forcibly-retired cop-turned-private eye Davis. The movie screens in theatres Sunday, prior to its CTV broadcast Dec. 17. ***

 

DUMB AND DUMBER TO

Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG. 110 minutes

Twenty years after their first road trip/misadventure, Harry and Lloyd (Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey) hit the road again in search of Harry’s long-lost daughter, but its the directors, the Farrelly brothers, who lose their way. The antics are as outrageous, but the comedy is disconcertingly more cruel. Geez, it’s Dumb and Dumber, guys, not Mean and Meaner. **

 

FURY

Towne. 14A. 135 minutes.

A sergeant called Wardaddy (Brad Pitt) takes an innocent young recruit (Logan Lerman) under his wing to teach him combat and survival with a five-man tank crew in this Second World War drama. Director David Ayer, who wrote and directed End of Watch and wrote Training Day, specializes in the field of men of action under extreme pressure, and this film is accordingly tense, explosive and violent, but its resonant undercurrent of tragedy springs from the violence done to the spirit. *** 1/2

 

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2

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

The hapless would-be criminals of Horrible Bosses (Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis) strike out as their own bosses and are again pressured to resort to a life of crime when they are swindled by a mail-order magnate (Christoph Waltz) and his obnoxious son (Chris Pine). Day is hysterically hysterical when left to improvise with his cast mates, and the caper plot hangs together sufficiently well, but those with delicate comedic sensibilities should be warned off the potentially offensive raunch herein. *** 1/2

 

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 1

Grant Park, Kildonan Place, McGillivray, McGillivray VIP, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 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 that it never feels like a real movie so much as a chapter in a serial. Let the Games end already. **

 

INTERSTELLAR

McGillivray, Polo Park, Polo Park Imax, St. Vital. PG. 169 minutes.

In a post-apocalyptic future, a pilot (Matthew McConaughey) is recruited to leave his children to find a new habitable planet where the human race might find a second chance at survival. Director Christopher Nolan (Inception) delivers a satisfying combination of human drama and big spectacle. The outer space stuff in the film’s final two thirds, especially the journey through the wormhole, gives real magnificence to the obligatory trippy visuals we expect. ****

 

OUIJA

Towne. PG. 90 minutes.

After a girl is killed while playing with a Ouija board, a group of her friends initiate their own paranormal investigation into the cursed plaything, with predictably deadly results. Universal’s effort to reclaim its place as the Home for Horror takes a step backward with this duller-than-dull 89 minutes of your life you’ll never get back. Frankly, the board game is scarier, but only if you break the rules. * (Reviewed by Roger Moore)

 

THE PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR

Grant Park, Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. G. 92 minutes.

This animated feature spotlights those can-do Spheniscidae from the Madagascar movies — Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private — as they team with a 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). ***

 

SERENA

Polo Park. 14A 110 minutes.

Set in North Carolina during the Depression, this film by Susanne Bier (After the Wedding) tells the story of a timber magnate (Bradley Cooper) whose relationship with his tempestuous bride (Jennifer Lawrence) is derailed by a combination of greed and jealousy. With its broad symbolism and bad behaviour, this might have been entertaining as a good old-fashioned melodrama, but Bier contrives to frame it as a ploddingly-paced European art film. If Lawrence had been looking for an acting role model, she would have fared better with Bette Davis than Meryl Streep. **

 

ST. VINCENT

Polo Park. 14A. 103 minutes.

Bill Murray makes himself at home in the role of a seedy Vietnam vet whose smoking-drinking-gambling ways become an issue when he finds himself in the unlikely role of babysitter to the impressionable young son of a harried working single mom (Melissa McCarthy). If the premise sounds creaky, director Theodore Melfi wisely deploys Murray to de-sentimentalize the proceedings and give the story a jolt of the unpredictable with McCarthy, of all people, delivering much of the dramatic substance. ****

 

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

Grant Park. G. 124 minutes.

If astrophysicist Stephen Hawking had died within two years of his motor neuron disease diagnosis, as doctors believed, this film about his relationship with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones) would have been an easier boilerplate biopic/tragic romance. But Hawking (played remarkably well by Eddie Redmayne) transcended his prognosis, just as this film tends to transcend the cliché by emphasizing Jane’s story and delivering a mature examination of the limits of unselfish love. *** 1/2