Budgie Films Inc.
MOVIE REVIEW
BlackBerry (2023)
Countless American movies about capitalism make it look fun and sexy, and worth all the hard work. But “BlackBerry” is Canadian, about the lacunae of capitalism, which despite being good enough for the Berlinale unfortunately includes too many of its own. It’s the based-on-a-true story depiction of the rise and fall of Research in Motion, the Canadian company which basically invented the mobile phone. The company’s fall is not a spoiler; this review is not being written on a BlackBerry and you aren’t reading it on one either. It’s an investigation into how personalities can combine to build incredible success; and how that same combination can lead to downfall. Unfortunately it never quite reaches what it is capable of.
Continue reading “Smart Phonies” »
Laura Bombier
MOVIE REVIEW
Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks (2022)
At first glance you might not realize how revolutionary they were. The Kids in the Hall were five young white middle-class Canadian men from the suburbs, who came together at improvisational comedy clubs in Toronto in the late ’80s and discovered a collective comic genius for depicting the tribulations of aggravating, ridiculous ordinary life. One of the five, Scott Thompson, was gay – loudly so; the other four (Dave Foley, Mark McKinney, Kevin McDonald and Bruce McCulloch) couldn’t have cared less about that, and at the time that was new, strange and startling. Over the years the group has come together and come apart, dined out on the success of their TV show which ran from 1989 to 1995, made one movie (1996’s “Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy”) and managed (mostly) to stay a coherent, functioning group. This is due to their strong punk ethos – that is, for nonconformity, antiauthoritarianism and being true to oneself.
Continue reading “Old Kids on the Block” »
DreamWorks Animation
MOVIE REVIEW
How To Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)
“How to Train Your Dragon 2” drifts even further away from Cressida Cowell’s book series: Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) and friends have grown up, while Vikings and dragons coexist peacefully in Berk. Valka (Cate Blanchett) — long presumed dead after giving birth to Hiccup — turns out to be some reclusive conservationist jungle woman. Meanwhile, renegade Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou) has been assembling a dragon army to wage war on Berk.
Continue reading “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” »
MOVIE REVIEW
RoboCop (2014)
Columbia Pictures and MGM Pictures
There are several films wrapped up in "RoboCop," of which the new one starring Joel Kinnaman as the luckless Alex Murphy and Abbie Cornish as his traumatized wife is competent, slick and knows that some topicality will condense automatically in a movie with Samuel L. Jackson as a ranting conservative talk-show host. The immediate problem is the heavy fan-service nods made to another film, Paul Verhoeven's 1987 original, which tend to land with a clang. If the new model is going to invoke its predecessor as knowingly as that, it can't complain if some comparisons are made about the level of ambition. The Reaganite military-industrial complex with its heartless wonks was only one target of the original film, a curate's cornucopia that also scooped up the Vietnam mind-set, blue-collar nobility, the role of women, contempt for intelligence and religious symbolism. José Padilha's version puts all its chips on one number instead, correctly spotting that contracted-out drone warfare is a moral minefield, but down-shifting the end result from gallows pulp to a high-concept sci-fi actioneer about a dead-shot cyborg and the woman who loves him. American Jesus has been swapped out for American Gladiator.
Continue reading “To Protect and Preserve” »
MOVIE REVIEW
This Is the End (2013)
Suzanne Hanover/
Columbia Pictures
When two Jewish filmmakers decide to make a comedy based on the biblical Judgment Day, questions about their motives naturally arise. After all, this isn’t nearly as benign as Barbra Streisand recording a couple of Christmas albums. While comedy in any form has often been a taboo-slinging free-for-all, what Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are attempting with “This Is the End” could easily be perceived as sacrilegious. On the flip side, they could be accused of heresy if they were outright singing the Christian gospel.
Continue reading “Flirting During Disaster” »
Stone Angels
David Cronenberg's skills as an adapter of existing stories (eight of his movies have originated in other works, says a back-of-the-envelope calculation, even without counting "The Fly") are seeming more robust than ever, as he moves away from body horror and dives deeper into the life of the mind. And it's appropriate that, after "A Dangerous Method" dramatized debates about human sexual drives in the form of two erudite talking heads, he should tackle Don DeLillo's "Cosmopolis," in which a deeply disturbed young man wanders off the edge of sanity under his own steam, talking constantly while articulating hardly anything definable at all.
Continue reading “The Value of Nothing” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Cosmopolis (2012)
Stone Angels
The two prospective core audiences for this collaboration between cerebral auteur David Cronenberg and teen heartthrob Robert Pattinson will each have a pertinent question in mind before entering the cinema: Younger Pattinson fans looking for more of his tortured “Twilight” smoldering may ask themselves just how digestible this apparently adult and difficult film will be. Cronenberg watchers may be equally curious as to how the film stacks up at this particular juncture of his career. The director is currently three films into a relatively restrained mainstream phase of a recurring cycle. Last time, in the early 1990s, he brought a similarly respectable diversion to a juddering halt with “Crash” following the failure of “M. Butterfly.” With “Cosmopolis” being the first Mr. Cronenberg-penned screenplay since “eXistenZ” and “A Dangerous Method” widely criticized for lacking bite, hopes are high that “Cosmopolis” might be a return to the edgier Mr. Cronenberg of old.
Continue reading “Three-Martini Naked Lunch” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Fanboys (2009)
John Estes/The Weinstein Company
The Force is most certainly not with “Fanboys.” It is a flick made by fans, for fans and about fans of the Star Wars franchise. What the film lacks in quality it makes up for in gimmick, shtick and numerous references to the iconic franchise. Even a committed fan will struggle with this juvenile effort. The filmgoer who enjoys “Fanboys” is probably the same one still defending the creation of Jar Jar Binks on his Facebook profile.
Continue reading “It Ain’t Cool News” »