Arts 177 results

Reviews of fine art, classical and opera music, and all things cultured

Truth Forced Stars to See the Light

People:  Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen on I Saw the Light The good lord was willing and the creek didn't rise, but taking on the challenge of playing Hank Williams, the American icon who gave a nation its own lonesome sound, gave Tom Hiddleston and co-star Elizabeth Olsen a fresh lesson in authenticity By Katherine Monk TORONTO – “Last time I checked, I wasn’t born in Asgard,” says Tom Hiddleston. Indeed, the English actor was born in Westminster, the central chunk of London, a far cry from the celestial birthplace of Norse gods such as Odin, Thor and Loki, the latter representing Hiddleston’s ticket to the Hollywood big-time. In 2011, Hiddleston played the bitter little brother to Chris Hemsworth’s Thor in the continuing Marvel franchise, bringing true gravitas and drama to the comic book universe and causing a gravitational bend to the spotlight’s beam. Hiddleston went toe-to-toe with Anthony Hopkins and Robert Downey Jr. in Thor, but that same year ...
2.5Score

Movie review: The Lobster shows its claws

This surreal (and possibly brilliant satire) — in which a group of single people must find mates or be turned into animals — is more creepy than funny  
3.5Score

Movie review: Born to be Chet Baker

A new movie biography tells the story of how the handsome jazz legend came back from a devastating beating while trying to fight his addiction to heroin
2.5Score

Movie review: Still big, fat, and Greek

Fourteen years later, there is a sequel to the hit rom-com. The good news: it goes down the same path, and with many of the same jokes. The bad news: ditto.    
3.5Score

Movie review: 10 Cloverfield Lane keeps you guessing

Movie review: 10 Cloverfield Lane The story of a woman kept locked in an underground bunker by a survivalist is a gripping psychological thriller — unless it's a gripping sci-fi adventure
2.5Score

Movie review: Eddie The Eagle doesn’t fly

The story of England's most unlikely Olympian — a ski jumper who charmed the 1988 Games with his ineptitude — is turned into a film that follows a familiar formula  

And so it ends… with a bang.

Fiction: Mob Rule - Part 49 The family feud finally explodes in a hailstorm of bullets and foaming blood on the front lawns of Hyannis as Jack and his mob brothers storm the Kennedy castle By John Armstrong We got off the highway and headed toward Marchant Avenue, the road the compound lays on. Just before the turn for the long driveway I waved them to a halt again and got back out, standing in the street and directing the trucks down the road toward their respective “points of insertion”, as Beppe put it. Then I stood there looking at my watch. At two minutes to five, in the first misty light of dawn and the fog off the Atlantic still swirling around us, I got back in and waved our own group forward and into position. Then we waited again, listening to birds chattering in the trees. A car came down the road and slowed to see what was going on. Our driver pulled his gun from under his jacket and waved the driver through. Just as he passed, the first semi in our group ...

887: Robert Lepage televises the revolution

Theatre: 887 After decades of detouring issues of cultural identity, the veteran writer, actor and director creates his own confessional with 887, a new one-man show that revisits the minutia of memory By Katherine Monk VANCOUVER, BC — Robert Lepage always looks a little uncomfortable up there, standing like a ten-year-old at the altar, hands forcibly clasped, waiting for some wafer-thin affirmation of self. It’s the reason why his one-man shows are probably the best in the world: He can manifest conflict just by standing on stage. The quake of insecurity. It’s deep: A black vein of that shimmers though his oeuvre and powers his creative locomotive, now many cars long, with a relentless head of steam. As a critic who’s followed his shiny train of thought for decades, I’ve always wondered where that dark seam started. And when I had the occasion of interviewing him, I would ask. Whence the duality? Is there a political element? And he would always remain ...
2Score

Movie review: Zoolander 2 is less of the same

Fifteen years later, Ben Stiller's satire on the fashion industry comes back as a satire on itself, with no new ideas but lots of new celebrity cameos