Canada’s own Jason Reitman has made quite a name for himself in the last few years.  In 2005, he wrote and directed Thank You For Smoking (one of this reviewer’s favourite movies), a satirical look at the tobacco industry, before directing the widely-adored hipster romp Juno, which of course won an Oscar for Best Screenplay.  With a short, but impressive resume, Reitman has returned with Up in the Air, another satirical dramedy, this time taking a look at modern life.  Co-written and directed by Reitman, this is another film with …

Sherlock Holmes (2009) – Guy Ritchie
Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law play House and Wilson respectively in late 19th century CG London. Rachel McAdams has breasts. Very entertaining but runs a bit long in the second half, with too much lead up to the inevitable sequel. Nothing like his previous work, but there are still elements of Ritchie’s signature style. Downey Jr is the reason to see it however, so if you like him go, and if not go spend $15 on Avatar and then see it.
 
 
 
A Serious Man (2009) …

It’s the greatest fucking movie of all time. It’s that simple. Citizen Kane was a joke, 8 ½ was shallow, Star Wars had crappy effects, and 400 Blows was child’s play. You will laugh. You will cry. You will ponder the meaning of life and love. You will throw spoons at the screen and cry for Denny. Nothing I can say will do this film justice. You just have to see The Room (2003).

Placing itself somewhere between soft-core porn and foreign melodrama, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room is all the right …

You can’t nail comedy. Actually, rephrase that; you need skill and prowess to execute your comedy at just the right moments. All too often, a screenwriter, a comic, a director, a drunken partygoer, a backyard hooligan either lacks the patience or feels the need to expedite the patience required for the best comedic results. The best comedies which have gone down in cinematic history, from It Happened One Night and The Graduate to Animal House and recently Knocked Up, have done so because of their impeccable sense of comedic timing. …

A group of kids, fourteen years old or something, a group of kids stroll in from the root beer stained corridor, bouncing around at the bottom of the screen finding a clear row of eight seats. Strolling and bouncing around as if they going to a Brad Pitt movie. Or something. From this eagle’s nest, dead center, on padded seats to scrutinize, one can only notice the latecomers distracting from the opening previews. In this theatre, a group of kids, fourteen years old or something, walk in a few more …

A case of high expectations meeting with mixed results: Watching Adventureland, director and screenwriter Greg Mottola’s semi-autobiographical account of his summer from hell, for the first time. The raucous, highly juvenile teen comedy set in the 1980s from the director of the vulgarly sweet Superbad, as its theatrical run and subsequent DVD release advertisements strongly suggest, isn’t actually all that raucous, juvenile, or vulgar. What it did become was head-scratchingly confusing.
A case of leveled expectations met with shock, awe, and utter respect for the creator of a heartfelt and superbly …

Everyone loves Zombies. They instantly add additional points of awesome to any movie, and it’s almost impossible to mess them up (though some movies certainly try). But why are we so enthralled by the cinematic undead? Is it their immediate kitsch value? The zombies’ insatiable animalism and hunger? The mindlessness of the violence? The gratuity of the sex? The stupidity of the characters or the epicenes of their survival?
Whatever it is that makes zombie movies great, Dead Snow (2009) has it all and is bound to be the next zombie …

There are two ways to look at why District 9 is a bad movie.

Thirst (2009) is the latest film by renowned Korean filmmaker Park Chan-Wook, and while I still recommend checking it out, a couple of things about it are a bit off. To begin, Park unfortunately picked a bad time to release a movie about tragic vampires, as I’m sure some people are going to be referring to this as the Asian Twilight or something to that regard; which of course it is not. Park’s films have always contained an almost operatic air, a back and forth flow of thematic action and …

Life is fragile. An unexpected turn of events can lead to devastating consequences, while repercussions from past experiences can return to gnaw at hapless heels. Developing a sickness is no laughing matter, nor is being forced to cope with a terminal illness. Too many lives have been taken far too swiftly at the hand of unpredicted complications for life to seem trivial. The best must be made from it, every moment and every second. The birthing minutes of Funny People, Judd Apatow’s follow-up to 2007’s successful Knocked Up, show real …

It’s a new Studio Ghibli film, what more needs to be said? Beautiful, imaginative, and more adorable than I thought possible, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea is another success for Hayao Miyazaki and the Studio Ghibli team. The film follows the adventures of a magical fish girl called Ponyo, who after a chance encounter with a young boy, sets out on a quest to become human. Regardless of how stock the plot sounds, the film is nothing like The Little Mermaid. In fact the first thing I noticed …

Whenever I walk into my local comics store, I always make sure there are no other places I need to be for the next forty five minutes upon entering. I go to the new releases shelf, pick up my books, try a new one, approach the counter…  And it begins. The ensuing dialogue with the guy behind the counter is not a habit, it is a ritual. I know that I am going to rant and rave about the canon regarding The Skrull Invasion, or Cylons… For forty five minutes. …

Prom.  The idea of it means many different things for senior high school students; girls dream about the dress they are going to wear, guys think about how hot those girls are going to look, and both realize the high probability of there being some sort of action in the room the guy was supposed to have gotten for afterwards.  It is also the basic premise of Bart Got A Room, a film that enlists a great cast for a not-so-great result.
The film’s protagonist is Danny Stein (Steven Kaplan), a …

For a lot of men, visiting the Playboy mansion would be one of the things that they’d put on a ‘to do before I die’ list, but would never get around to.  Taking that concept and pairing it with the basic premise of Road Trip is Miss March, a uhm..comedy from the directors (and stars) of The Whitest Kids U Know.  And while the show that Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore have together is a sketch comedy that pushes boundaries, any attempts at the same in Miss March are just …

I remember being around twelve years old and seeing images of Dave Gibbon’s artwork for the first time in a little Terry Zwigoff doco on mainstream comics. It looked so goddamn weird. I was habitually taking The Dark Knight Returns out of the library at that point, a big push out of the current X-men arcs I was following with lunch money alone. I would like to say that when the pulp edition of Watchmen first came into my possession later that year, it was a game changing, mind expanding …