Jay Stone 136 results
2.5Score

Movie review: Terminator Genysis back in time

The sci-fi epic returns with a new episode that borrows pieces of the old episodes to create a time-travel adventure that's mostly a waste of two hours    
2Score

Movie review: Ted 2 is an exhausting series of comic misfires

Sequel to the movie about a crude, dope-smoking teddy bear just a wearying retread of the 2012 hit, writes Jay Stone

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 ...
2Score

Movie review: Being Canadian a trip of cliches

Documentary that examines myths about Canada ends up creating as many stereotypes as it tries to explode, writes Jay Stone
3 1/2 Score

Movie review: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is metamoving

This movie about a teenager with cancer is partly about movies about teenagers with cancer, writes Jay Stone
3Score

Movie review: Another Brilliant Young Mind

It's another film about a brilliant and troubled math genius looking for love — and it finds the same irrational number
3.5Score

Movie review: Phoenix a post-Nazi drama of identity

German actress Nina Hoss gives a fascinating performance as a woman who returns from a death camp to find her true love — and her own persona, writes Jay Stone  
4Score

Movie review: Love & Mercy finds harmony of a troubled genius

Paul Dano and John Cusack both play Brian Wilson in a creative musical biography that looks inside the head of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson   - 30 -

A Magical and Mild Adventure in Valencia

An ancient city inside a new one beckons Jay Stone to the surprise-filled birthplace of paella By Jay Stone VALENCIA, Spain — We came here by chance, the way people used to travel when they were in their 20s and it was all about moving and a destination was just a name to drop, a place to rest on the road. We came in that spirit. We stayed for the paella. It was invented here, in this bustling city on the south coast of Spain (the Valencia orange was invented in California). It’s delicious too, although I’m not the one to ask. It was delicious everywhere. I like to think I have good taste in movies, but I don’t have any taste in taste. So, Valencia: magical, all the more so if you don’t expect anything except a place to stop 3½ hours from Barcelona because 3½ hours is about all you want to do. An old city surrounded by a new one: outside, there’s the famous City of Arts and Sciences — an IMAX theatre, an aquarium, a science museum, an arts complex all in ...

Dispatches from Abroad: The Gentle Yens of Girona

Jay Stone explores an ancient Spanish city to discover a slow parade of humanity on cobble stone streets and the prosthetic digits of Edward Scissorhands By Jay Stone GIRONA, Spain -- There's a great lassitude that settles over Spain on a Sunday -- or perhaps, that settles over the visitor to Spain on a Sunday -- that is somehow ideal if you wash up in Girona. It's a medieval city just east of Barcelona whose historic district, all cobbled streets and narrow alleys, were built circa 1000. Little wrought iron balconies are set in the stone walls, and I saw an older couple sitting at a bistro table, having lunch together and each looking at their own cell phone. The stores aren't open, but the museums are free -- a mixed blessing -- and so you climb the steep steps behind the cathedral to the famous Jewish quarter, or El Call, one of the oldest in Europe. Once again, Jewish people have their historic roots on a hill all the better -- at least in this telling -- to come down ...