Movies

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This article was published 24/12/2014 (3967 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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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 the 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. ****

 

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BIG EYES

McGillivray, Towne. PG. 106 minutes

A female artist gains fame, but her husband takes credit for the work and makes the fortune. It sounds like a Lifetime movie, except the female artist is Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), famous — or infamous — for her sentimental paintings of big-eyed children in the early 1960s. The story of her relationship with her grasping, opportunistic husband (Christoph Waltz) is told with a minimum of baroque style by director and longtime Keane fan Tim Burton. ***

 

THE GAMBLER

Grant Park, McGillivray, Polo Park, Towne. 14A. 111 minutes.

This remake of a 1974 film casts Mark Wahlberg as a self-destructive gambler apparently seeking self-immolation at the roulette wheel or blackjack table. Where the original film was gritty and dark, this one is slick and barren, with Wahlberg trying hard despite being deeply, profoundly miscast. However, John Goodman, cast as a murderous loan shark with a paternal streak, may be worth the price of admission for the few minutes he has onscreen. **

 

THE IMITATION GAME

Grant Park, Polo Park. PG. 115 minutes.

Benedict Cumberbatch gets his best screen role as Alan Turing, the genius credited with breaking the German’s 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. ****

 

UNBROKEN

Grant Park, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG. 138 minutes.

Angelina Jolie’s film about ex-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. ** (Reviewed by Roger Moore)

 

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

 

ANNIE

Kildonan Place, Polo Park, Towne. G. 118 minutes.

In this remake of the 1982 musical, Quvenzhané Wallis re-invents 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. *** (Reviewed by Roger Moore)

 

BIG HERO 6

Polo Park, St. Vital. 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. ***

 

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS

Kildonan Place, McGillivray, 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)

 

THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES

Grant Park, Kildonan Place, McGillivray, McGillivray VIP, 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. *** 1/2

 

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2

Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital. 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 castmates, 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

Kildonan Place, 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 that it never feels like a real movie so much as a chapter in a serial. Let the Games end already. **

 

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 3: SECRET OF THE TOMB

Grant Park, Kildonan Place, 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. ** (Reviewed by Roger Moore)

 

THE PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR

Kildonan Place, Polo Park, 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 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

Bandwidth. 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 its 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

Bandwidth. 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. ****

 

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

 

WILD

Grant Park. 14A. 112 minutes.

Reese Witherspoon plays a 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. *** 1/2