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Jay Stone and Katherine Monk movie reviews and profiles. Movies new to streaming / DVD.
Reviews of Canadian movies and filmmaker profiles by Katherine Monk and Jay Stone.

Top Ten 2015: Women land box-office blows for a surprise win

Movies: Top Ten 2015 Women stormed the box-office with raw power and profound emotional insight, overcoming Hollywood's institutional misogyny By Katherine Monk Let’s hear it for the girls. Though the year started slowly with just a handful of bright moments on what seemed to be a rather bleak horizon — from a pruny soak in a Hot Tub Time Machine and a disappointing date with The Avengers — 2015 ended up celebrating the fair sex in surprise fashion, starting with Mad Max’s furious females lead by Charlize Theron. The movie was kicked from the ticket wicket by Elizabeth Banks’s Pitch Perfect chorus, but there was still plenty of room for revision as Melissa McCarthy took on the spy genre and Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith deconstructed the adolescent female psyche in Inside Out. James Bond lost a bit of box-office mojo with Spectre – pulling in $196 million domestically, compared to Skyfall’s $304 million – but while Hollywood expressed concern over a grim ...
3Score

Murder, He Wrote

Movie review: The Hateful Eight Quentin Tarantino creates a self-conscious cartoon that puts a bullet through the brain of western myth  
3.5Score

Star Wars goes back to the future

Movie review: Star Wars - The Force Awakens The long-awaited new movie reclaims the universe of Star Wars, makes it fresh again, and still finds room for old favorites like Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher
1.5Score

Pointless and broken

Movie review: Point Break The remake of Kathryn Bigelow's cult classic about two dudes on opposite sides of the law is a murky bore
4Score

The Big Short goes long on greed

Movie review: The Big Short Capitalizing on his comedy savvy talent, director-writer Adam McKay turns Wall Street's crooked ways into a fragmented farce that makes us laugh at our own funeral  
2Score

Movie review: Sisters is sibling revelry

The smart humour of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler is reduced to the vulgar antics of frat-boy comedy in this disappointing film about an out-of-control house party
3.5Score

Mississippi Grind percolates

Movie review: Mississippi Grind The team behind Half Nelson and Sugar return with a film about chronic gambling that isn't as depressing as it probably should be, thanks to a pair of pocket kings in Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn

A dog movie unleashes emotion in Marrakech

Festivals: Festival International Du Film De Marrakech Liberated from the Oscar bait vying for her attention in New York, veteran film critic Thelma Adams lets go in the exotic darkness of a Moroccan movie palace By Thelma Adams MARRAKECH, MOROCCO -- "Each person dies as best they can," says Julian (Ricardo Darin) in the Spanish-language dramedy Truman, screened out of competition at the Festival International Du Film De Marrakech. Julian is a self-involved and straight-shooting stage actor riddled with cancer and reluctant to go another round with chemo. His best friend Tomas (Javier Camara) travels to Madrid from Montreal for a reluctant reunion. It will likely be their last. In this Spanish-Argentinian co-production there will be tears and tenderness, shared memories and wine bottles, conflicts and revelations – and steamy sex. In Spanish director Cesc Gay's seventh film, there is also a very large, soulful hound named Truman that Julian is seeking to surrender to a new ...
4Score

Theeb: A Middle Eastern Western

Movie review: Theeb Jordan's official nomination for the best foreign film Oscar is a tightly wound adventure story about a Bedouin boy learning how to be a man on the eve of the First World War

Wim Wenders finds warmth in Canadian winter

People: Wim Wenders The German filmmaker says he used stereoscopic 3D technology in Every Thing Will Be Fine, his latest art film about grief and loss, in a bid to bring depth to Quebec's unique landscape By Katherine Monk TORONTO – His voice sounds like something straight out of a fairy tale: a soft German accent bending over vowels with a delicate arc and a deep warm tone that seems to echo through hand-milled timber. Even his name, Wim Wenders, feels like a plucky character from a Grimm plot, so the fact that this German auteur has transformed the stark hues and blinding skies of the Canadian landscape into a cozy microcosm feels strangely natural. Every Thing Will Be Fine is Wenders’s 46th film, but it marks a series of firsts: It’s his first film in Canada, his first shoot in winter, and the first time any auteur has used 3D technology in the heady pursuit of an art film. Wenders always thought the technology was used poorly – a point he proved in ...