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
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 ...
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
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
Split fuses silly with sloppy
Movie review: Split
James McAvoy's over-the-top performance as a man with multiple personalities lends M. Night Shyamalan's tediously self-conscious thriller a hint of fun
Julieta is a thing of beauty
Movie review: Julieta
Pedro Almodóvar's 20th feature film finds female beauty deep within the creases of profound loss as we watch two women bear the burden of being Julieta
Hidden Figures exposes institutional racism
Movie Review: Hidden Figures
Theodore Melfi's quest for the stars has all the rights cogs and gears as it features Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe as mathemeticians playing a big role in the early days of NASA, but even with Kevin Costner's booster rocket, the voyage feels mechanical
Bringing up Babies: Top Ten movies of 2016
Movies: Top Ten 2016
Some say Donald Trump won the Presidency playing to childish insecurity and name-calling, but the annual box-office derby also proved a public appetite for adolescent entertainments. Film Critic Katherine Monk breaks down the top-ten money earners, and offers her own take on the year's best.
By Katherine Monk
(Published Jan. 2, 2017)
The political arena wasn’t the only place where childhood behaviours prevailed in 2016. Movie theatres also played to our apparent desire for less-sophisticated, over-simplified entertainments.
It was the year the Mouse House roared: The Walt Disney Company was responsible for five of the year’s top ten earners worldwide, for a record haul of $4.829 billion - just a little under half the cumulative worldwide gross of $11.3 billion.
Disney raced to the pinnacle of a relatively static box-office heap with titles that included the top-earning Captain America: Civil War ($1.153B), Finding Dory ($1.027B), Zootopia ...
Lion has a big roar
Movie review: Lion
The true story of Saroo Brierley's quest for his ancestral home finds an epic scale through intimate, emotionally compelling scenes and standout performances from a top-notch ensemble
Arrival proves mind-altering
Movie review: Arrival
Denis Villeneuve's latest may look like a simple first-contact story, but it goes much deeper as it questions the linear nature of time and the role of language
