Movie review: Madame Bovary doesn’t measure up
The latest film adaptation of Flaubert's classic novel presents a petulant heroine who seems to be seeking distraction rather than romance, writes Jay Stone
By Jay Stone
Poor old Emma Bovary: lost in dreams of love, dead of grief, adapted into a lot of movies that — like the men who abandoned her — never quite measured up. The latest screen version (and the first directed by a woman) presents Gustave Flaubert’s tragic story as a drama about a woman who is not so much seduced by notions of romanticism as given to adultery and materialism because there’s not much else to do. You suspect that had the Internet been invented in 19th Century France, this Emma would have been content with video games and Amazon.
She’s played by Mia Wasikowska, who can project strength (in Tracks) or exotic abandon (Only Lovers Left Alive) or even lush yearning (Jane Eyre). Here though, under the direction of Sophia Barthes, she’s not much more than a petulant ...
Magic Mike XXL has man-candy but no mojo
Steven Soderbergh's dark horse is turned into a gelding at the hands of director Gregory Jacobs, who squeezes his manly talent too hard, and turns off the ladies with crass crotch grabs and dull conversation, writes Katherine Monk
Director trades quick-draws for Slow West
First-time feature director John Maclean takes on western archetype and the core ideals of the American ethos in Slow West, his Sundance-winning feature starring Michael Fassbender and Kodi Smit-McPhee
By Katherine Monk
It's a genre marked by star-shaped badges and John Wayne’s lanky swagger, an optimistic ode to masculine heroes and horses. Yet, for all the fanatical affection lathered on westerns as a fundamental part of the American identity, historically speaking, most westerns are horse manure.
It’s a point John Maclean isn’t all that eager to assert right off the top, given he’s a Scotsman and his debut feature, Slow West, takes the viewer straight back to the open prairie and the romantic vistas revealed in early John Ford movies.
“Being Scottish, and tackling such a sacred American genre certainly crossed my mind the first time I watched it with an audience in the U.S.,” says Maclean, shortly after the film’s world premiere at the Sundance film festival, ...
Movie review: Max bites emotional jugular
Though littered with sentiment and family movie hokum, this story of a military dog suffering from post-traumatic stress finds the essence of true friendship, prompting uncontrolled saline leaks from the eyeball, writes Katherine Monk
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Home releases: What’s streaming your way in June
Kevin Costner cocks the starter pistol, Liam Neeson runs all night, John Travolta fakes it, Colin Firth pops his brolly and Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart Get Hard -- but it's Red Army's Fetisov who scores on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD, writes Katherine Monk
By Katherine Monk
McFarland (2015)
3.5/5
Starring: Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Ramiro Rodriguez, Carlos Pratts, Johnny Ortiz, Morgan Saylor. Directed by Niki Caro. Running time: 129 minutes. Parental Guidance.
In sports movies, cliché comes on the side – like coleslaw. You don’t ask for it, and you may not even like it, but there it is: a little white paper cup filled with shredded cabbage, a silent affirmation that you got what you paid for. The coleslaw in McFarland is the idea of the underdog competitor, in this case, a group of Latino high school students in southern California. Jim White (Kevin Costner) used to coach football at a school for privileged white kids, but after he loses his temper, he’s fired ...
Snow White and the seven emotions
Inside Out is the story of an 11-year-old girl's emotions. But almost 80 years ago, Disney had another movie that looked at feelings in a similar way
By Jay Stone
The near universal praise for the Pixar film Inside Out (98 per cent and counting on Rotten Tomatoes, and the demurrals seem pro forma) are partly due to the very audacity of the idea. This is an animated film about the emotions of an 11-year-old girl named Riley: how Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness work together — or sometimes at odds — to form a human personality in flux.
It arrives as a Disney film without a villain and without a princess (although, parenthetically, even the most mundane marketing department — and Disney’s is far from that — should find many opportunities for toys, dolls and other associated merchandise. One fully expects to see hordes of little Angers and Joys trooping to the house next Halloween.)
However, that’s the least of ...
