Katherine Monk Movie Review 63 results
4Score

Movie review: Inside Out a happy head trip

Disney Pixar takes a long walk down an infinite pier of personal identity in Inside Out, an animated tour of developmental psychology that captures the pain of growing up using primary colours and Amy Poehler's voice
3.5Score

Movie review: Jurassic World turns park dark

Director Colin Trevorrow tries to fill dinosaur-sized shoes with digital science and a bigger scope in his next-generation take on the $800-million Jurassic franchise  
3.5Score

Movie review: Spy shakes up sexist tropes to serve dry comic martini

Melissa McCarthy takes a character who typically blends into the background and makes her visible, forcing us to see the inherently sexist tropes of the super spy genre, writes Katherine Monk  
3Score

Movie review: I’ll See You in My Dreams

Blythe Danner brings quiet strength and suspended sexual energy to the role of a widow polished to a fine shine by life in Brett Haley's drama that proves you can fall, and get up again
3Score

Movie review: The Rock moves San Andreas

Special effects make tectonic nightmare come to life in stock exercise that combines the best of the worst disaster scenarios in one earthquake extravaganza, writes Katherine Monk
4Score

Welcome to Me, Myself and Whaa?

Movie Review: Welcome to Me Kristen Wiig pulls off the impossible as a mentally ill lottery winner in Shira Piven's dark satire set in the selfie-obsessed post-Oprah age
3.5Score

Movie review: Tomorrowland

Disney pushes all the happy buttons in a quest to bring a silver lining to our cloudy future in the Vancouver-shot fantasy that stars George Clooney as a brainy curmudgeon  

Catching up with what’s new on DVD VOD and Blu-ray in May

Manny Pacquaio takes a beating, Bradley Cooper pulls the trigger, Leviathan makes black splash, Julianne Moore proves Oscar-worthy and Tom Cavanagh goes bird man By Katherine Monk Manny (2014) 3.5/5 Starring: Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather, Jinkee Pacquiao, Mark Wahlberg, Jimmy Kimmel, Dan Hill, Freddie Roach. Directed by Ryan Moore and Leon Gast. Narrated by: Liam Neeson. Running time: 87 minutes. Though it was produced before Manny Pacquaio’s much yapped-about face-off against Floyd Mayweather and subsequent fan lawsuit alleging the whole thing was a fraud, this documentary directed by Ryan Moore and Leon Gast (of When We Were Kings fame) still has a sense of destiny to it, because in the end, that’s what you need in any fight movie – as well as any fighter. Great warriors believe they are fulfilling some unwritten prophecy, and from the moment Manny stepped into the ring as a scrawny, underage kid (he lied on his boxing forms), he felt God was in his corner. ...

Interview: Ethan Hawke and director Andrew Niccol zero in on Good Kill

Reunited for the first time since Gattaca, the actor and the filmmaker are raising questions -- and their fair share of hell -- with a new movie that takes the viewer inside the new theatre of war: climate-controlled trailers parked on U.S. soil By Katherine Monk TORONTO – As the Obama Administration faces mounting pressure to disclose the grisly details of drone strikes on civilians across the Middle East this week, a new movie threatens to blow the whole unmanned aerial vehicle program sky high. It’s called Good Kill, and unlike the handful of documentaries that have already taken the drone strategy to task for its arm’s length summary executions of suspected terrorists, it’s a dramatic film starring solid Hollywood stars Ethan Hawke, January Jones and Canada’s own Bruce Greenwood. Writer-director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, S1mOne, Lord of War, The Host) says he wasn’t looking for controversy when he started researching the subject and speaking to former drone ...
2Score

Movie review: Hot Pursuit yields tepid results

Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara do their best to inflate sagging entry in the bosom buddies comedy genre, but the results are tepid at best