Entertainment 505 results

Movies, music and popular culture reports from Ex-Press staff

4Score

Ghost in the Shell shows off Johansson’s muscle

Movie Review: Ghost in the Shell The woman who plays Black Widow packs a punch and a few roundhouse kicks as Major, the police robot with a human brain and a big metaphysical question in this detailed homage to the Japanese original

Linda Thorson makes a first in Second Time Around

People: Linda Thorson After a career that bathed her in the London limelight, the Canadian actress who replaced Diana Rigg on The Avengers makes a homecoming in her first starring role as an icy Ontario matron in The Second Time Around By Katherine Monk “Never a dull moment.” For Linda Thorson, it’s more than a life motto. It’s an existential promise. The Toronto-born actor crafted a career via British stage and television after replacing Diana Rigg on The Avengers, but the life adventure just keeps going. Thorson has a new boyfriend, and after five decades in the business, her first starring role in a feature film. Thorson plays Katherine, an uptight, opera-loving matron who finds love in a seniors’ home in The Second Time Around, a new movie from Leon Marr that recently picked up the audience award at The Palm Beach film festival. Currently on the Canadian art house circuit with stops in Vancouver and Montreal, The Second Time Around tells the story of ...

Screwing up his courage for The Second Time Around

People: Leon Marr Talking about sex and the seniors' residence with the director of The Second Time Around, a new movie that tackles taboo and takes us into the boudoir with tenderness, patience and operatic ambition By Katherine Monk (April 3, 3017) -- The Centers for Disease Control declared April STD awareness month, which means there’s no better time for the release of The Second Time Around. It’s a new feature film by Leon Marr after a decades-long hiatus, and while it’s not about sexually transmitted disease – at all – it does focus on a demographic with an increasing transmission rate: senior citizens. The CDC suggests the aging baby boomers are making the most out of their senior years, if the steady rise in syphilis cases among those over 65 is any indication: between 2007 and 2011, researchers noted a rise of 52 per cent. Part of it has to do with taboos surrounding sex in the golden years. It’s not something society talks about all that often ...
3Score

The Boss Baby demands your attention

Movie Review: The Boss Baby Alec Baldwin scales down his 30 Rock character to a pint-sized power broker looking to put puppies in their place and pad the bottom line for infants everywhere in The Boss Baby
3.5Score

Confirmation deserves second look

VOD/DVD: Confirmation Kerry Washington makes a compelling case as Anita Hill in Confirmation, an HBO original that proves more timely than ever as it disrobes the Supreme Court nomination process

Jay Baruchel on Goons, loons and Canadians’ saloon-speak

Interview: Jay Baruchel The veteran actor and star of How to Train Your Dragon makes his directorial debut with Goon 2: Last of the Enforcers, but the closet poet says his movie is about more than small-town hockey, it's about the very heart and expletive-laden soul of the Canadian identity By Katherine Monk VANCOUVER, BC — Jay Baruchel emerges from the elegantly muted, sand coloured hallway with the urgency and focus of a grey squirrel gathering mid-winter nuts. He’s on a mission and if it means tipping over a garbage can or two, traversing a frozen road from an overhead transmission wire or even fluffing up his tale for a confrontation with the unsuspecting public — he’s ready. The Canadian actor known for playing Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon, as well as earning a place alongside Tom Cruise as one of the bawdy pranksters in Tropic Thunder, recently directed his first feature, Goon 2: Last of the Enforcers. He says it was the achievement of a life-long ...
3.5Score

Sense of an Ending eludes closure

Movie Review: The Sense of an Ending In the film version of the ambiguous Julian Barnes novel, Jim Broadbent shines as an older man whose quiet life is interrupted by a letter that makes him re-evaluate the past
2.5Score

The Last Word chokes on phoney tone

Movie review: The Last Word Shirley MacLaine and Amanda Seyfried chew through some overcooked dialogue and brittle character details to masticate the most out of a forced dynamic between a control freak facing the final chapter and a cynical obituary writer  
2.5Score

Kong: Skull Island feels a little empty-headed

Movie Review: Kong - Skull Island The oversized ape makes a spectacular return in this big-budget B-movie that tries to plumb the depths of the American psyche but ends up playing in a muddy puddle
3.5Score

Arthritis and Adamantium: Logan senses an ending

Movie Review: Logan movie review James Mangold's latest instalment in the X-Men franchise takes a heroic look at mortality via Hugh Jackman's aging Wolverine and Patrick Stewart's supernaturally demented Professor Xavier