MOVIES

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This article was published 14/12/2014 (4270 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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. PG. 114 minutes.

This riveting documentary by Laura Poitras offers an inside look at the saga of NSA whistleblower 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

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. Check listings for irregular screenings. ***

 

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 it’s the directors, the Farrelly brothers, who lose their way. The antics are as outrageous as in the first movie, but the comedy is disconcertingly more cruel. Geez, it’s Dumb and Dumber, guys, not Mean and Meaner. **

 

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS

Grant Park, Kildonan Place, McGillivray, McGillivray VIP, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG. 151 minutes.

Director Ridley Scott takes on the story of Moses (Christian Bale) and turns it into the Old Testament as action epic. But those hoping for a sermon may be let down. Scott’s film doesn’t preach, not even to the choir. *** 1/2 (Reviewed by Roger Moore)

 

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

 

THE GREEN PRINCE

Bandwidth Theatre. PG. 101 minutes.

This documentary by Nadav Schirman examines the unexpected intelligence partnership that developed between the son of a Hamas leader and the Shin Bet agent who risked his career to protect him. With its preponderance of talk, it’s not great filmmaking, but the story is so compelling, it doesn’t matter as much as it might. **** (Reviewed by Kenneth Turan)

 

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2

Kildonan Place, McGillivray, 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 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. ****

 

JINGLE BELL ROCKS!

Cinematheque. PG. 94 minutes.

Filmmaker Mitchell Kezin explores an exclusive cult of which he is a charter member: seekers of weird and obscure Christmas music. Like fellow Canuck documentarian Alan Zweig (When Jews Were Funny), Kezin makes the search about his own damaged psyche. Fortunately, also like Zweig, the doc’s sheer entertainment value shines through, courtesy of interview subjects including John Waters, the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne, Bob Dorough and Clarence Carter (the artist behind the naughty but nice Back Door Santa). *** 1/2

 

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 up 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). ***

 

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

Towne. 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, Polo 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

 

TOP FIVE

Polo Park. 18A. 102 minutes.

Chris Rock wrote, directed and stars in this comedy about a comedian trying to make his break into straight drama while his fiancée (Gabrielle Union) tries to hoodwink him into getting married live on her reality show. Decades into an indifferent film career, Rock has come to terms with the fact he’s a better standup comedian than he is an actor, and if he’s going to write, direct and star in a film, he’s better off playing one. *** (Reviewed by Roger Moore)

 

WHIPLASH

Grant Park. 14A. 108 minutes.

A young fledgling jazz drummer (Miles Teller) gives his all to a fiendishly manipulative college music instructor (J.K. Simmons) who makes his life hell. The film itself offers a tough lesson in music and life: For an artist intent on achieving greatness, the Musicians Union is the only entity demanding that dues be paid. *** 1/2