Seeking a Friend for the End of the World Review (Kirk Haviland)
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)
Starring Steve Carell, Keira Knightley, Adam Brody, Connie Britton, Rob Corddry, Derek Luke and Martin Sheen
Written and Directed by Lorene Scafaria
For the second week in a row, this time coming from Entertainment One (eone), we get another piece of summer blockbuster counter programming that is a quirky oddball romantic comedy with a sci-fi twist. After last week’s time travel comedy Safety Not Guaranteed we get a film about the end of the world as it literally states in the title, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. Safety was a film that worked because it didn’t get buried under its own quirkiness, can Seeking do the same?
As the film opens we discover that the world will end in 21 days due to the last attempt at derailing an inbound meteor failing. We see Dodge…
View original post 512 more words
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Review
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)
Starring Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rufus Sewell and Jimmi Simpson.
Written by Seth Grahame-Smith
Directed by Timur Bekmambetov
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is one of a line of mash-up books, including Grahame-Smith’s own Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which are currently extremely popular in the fiction world. Teaming up with Producer/Director Bekmambetov and Producer Tim Burton, and adapting his own book for the screen, Grahame-Smith brings the first of his two books to the theaters this summer with Abe Lincoln. With it’s over the top visuals and absurdist premise, will Abe Lincoln Vamp Hunter be among this year’s most fun excursions to the multiplex or will it be this year’s Jonah Hex?
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter traces the former president’s story back to when he was a child. We first meet Abraham as he interferes with the beating of a…
View original post 646 more words
Alps Review
Alps (Alpeis)
Starring Aggeliki Papoulia, Ariane Lebed, Aris Servetalis, Johnny Vekris and Stavros Psyllakis
Written by Efthymis Filippou and Giorgos Lanthimos
Directed by Giorgos Lanthimos
Director Giorgos Lanthimos smashed onto the scene in 2009 with the Venice Film Festival award winning Dogtooth. Lanthimos returns with another surrealist dark comedy with Alps, which starts its engagement at TIFF’s Bell Lightbox this Friday June 22nd.
Alps is the story of four people who start a business venture where they take on the mannerisms and dialogue of the recently deceased in order to help people cope with loss of their loved ones. Consisting of a gymnast, her coach, a paramedic, and a nurse, the four dub themselves Alps because in their leader Mount Blanc’s opinion the Alps can never be mistaken for any other mountain range, but they are big enough to fill the space of any other mountain range. The…
View original post 426 more words
NXNE: My Father and the Man in Black Review
My Father and the Man in Black
Starring Saul Holiff, Jonathan Holiff and Johnny Cash
Written and Directed by Jonathan Holiff
With the plethora of Johnny Cash documentaries and the biopic “Walk the Line” you would wonder if we really need another look at this music icon on film. But My Father and the Man in Black sets itself apart because it’s NOT a film about Johnny Cash but a film about Saul Holiff, Johnny Cash’s long-time manager, the director Jonathan Hollif’s estranged father who he had not talked to for the last 20 years of Saul’s life, leading up to his suicide in 2005. What we get, in the words of the director, is essentially a slickly produced home movie about the father he barely knew and the life he led that his sons knew next to nothing about.
We start with a re-enactment of Saul’s suicide…
View original post 622 more words
TKFF Preview
Toronto Korean Film Festival 2012
5 Reasons you need to check out the TKFF
This month brings the launch of a new film festival for us residents of “Festival City” aka Toronto. The Toronto Korean Film Festival runs from June 22nd until July 1st over 9 days and aims to introduce those not familiar to some of the best of Korean film. For its inaugural event the staff of TKFF have decided to feature a best of Korean Cinema lineup, rather than just new undiscovered cinema, as an introduction for the non-indoctrinated and to offer a rare chance to see these films on a theater screen to those who have seen them before at home. That said, I will now tell you the 5 reasons why I will be in attendance.
5 – Korean Culture. The festival organizers are just as motivated to introduce people to Korean culture…
View original post 614 more words
NXNE: Irvine Welsh’s Exstacy Review
Starring Adam Sinclair, Kristin Kreuk, Billy Boyd, Carlo Rota, Keram Malicki-Sanchez, Stephen McHattie and Dean McDermott
Written by Rob Heydon, Matt Maclennan, Paul McCafferty, Ben Tucker and Irvine Welsh (Based on Irvine Welsh`s novel)
Directed by Rob Heydon
Irvine Welsh became counter-culture hero when the movie based on his seminal novel Trainspotting was released back in 1996. With its no-nonsense, gritty, dirty and frighteningly realistic portrayal of a group of hooligan drug addicts in Scotland, Trainspotting became a critical and financial smash and launched the careers of Ewan Mcgregor and Robert Carlyle. Back with a new movie based on another of his best-selling novels and set in the underground rave scene of Scotland, the question is does director Heydon manage to craft a film near the brilliance of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting? Or do we get a film that manages to miss the mark of…
View original post 531 more words
Safety Not Guaranteed Review
Starring Aubrey Plaza, Jake M. Johnson, Karan Soni and Mark Duplass
Written by Derek Connolly
Directed by Colin Trevorrow
Safety Not Guaranteed, the newest film from Alliance Films and produced by the Duplass Brothers, may end up being one of the hardest movies to categorize this year. Part Sci-fi time travel opus, part romantic comedy, part melodrama and all oddball quirky comedy, Safety rides a lot on the performances of its leads. But is it one of those films that can get buried under its own quirkiness?
We start off with Darius (Plaza) completely blowing a job interview for a job she clearly has no motivation to get, but since she is an unpaid intern at Seattle Magazine she really just wants the money. During a pitch meeting at the magazine Jeff (Johnson) pitches the idea of an article based on a strange classified ad he…
View original post 391 more words
Island President Review
Starring Mohamed Nasheed
Directed by Jon Shenk
The Island President is the story of the President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, and his fight to save his island nation from a natural disaster brought on by global warming. It follows his history from activist to president, but spends most of its time focused on the first year of his presidency and his influence on the Copenhagen Climate Summit held in 2009. The film has a strong environmental message behind it, but is the film as strong as its message?
The film opens with President Nasheed explaining the situation and dire circumstances of global warming on his island nation. We segue into a brief history lesson of the Maldives and its former dictatorship-like rule under the brutal hand of Maumoon Gayoom. Gayoom ruled for 30 years unopposed, he was compared to the likes of a Mafia Don…
View original post 445 more words
Lovely Molly Review (Kirk Haviland)
Starring Gretchen Lodge, Johnny Lewis and Alexandra Holden
Written by Eduardo Sanchez and Jamie Nash
Directed by Eduardo Sanchez
In 1999 Eduardo Sanchez practically invented the now booming “found-footage” style of filmmaking with his massively successful Blair Witch Project. Now he’s back with another supernatural thriller that, while using some of the found-footage style of filmmaking, uses a more linear style and documents the rapid descent into madness of its lead character.
Lovely Molly starts with a montage of the wedding of Molly (Lodge) and Tim (Lewis) and them moving into the family house. Shortly after this sequence we are witness to the first incident that happens. Through this we discover that the couple have been living there three months. Tim is a long-haul driver, gone for stretches at a time, and the house as it turns out was the scene of the demise of Molly’s father…
View original post 297 more words
Prometheus Review (Kirk Haviland)
Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Loan Marshall-Green, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall and Charlize Theron
Written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof
Directed by Ridley Scott
Much has been made over Ridley Scott’s return to Science Fiction, and more specifically to the universe he launched with 1979’s seminal sci-fi/horror masterpiece, Alien. Just as much hype has been made by Scott himself, downplaying the whole connection to the Alien franchise, and as it turns out, rightfully so. Prometheus is very heavy on the SCI part of the equation and very light on everything else as Scott goes completely cerebral for a film clearly inspired more by 2001: A Space Odyssey than his own Alien.
Prometheus begins with a sprawling montage of beautiful vistas and landscapes that we soon discover are not earth, but a foreign planet similar to our own. A very humanoid looking, extremely pale…
View original post 666 more words
Piranha 3DD Review (Kirk Haviland)
Starring Danielle Panabaker, Matt Bush, David Koechner, Chris Zylka, Christopher Lloyd, Gary Busey and Ving Rhames
Written by Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan and Joel Soisson
Directed by John Gulager
In 2010 director Alexandre Aja delivered a campy, fun-filled, bombastic remake of the 1978 film Piranha. The film has lived on as a guilty pleasure of many, including myself, with its no holds barred and severe tongue-in-cheek attitude. As Alliance films delivers a sequel this weekend the only question that remains is can they recreate the same mix of humor and campy horror again?
Piranha 3DD starts with a recap of the first film’s events, via a news report styled montage, which explains what has happened to Lake Victoria since the end of the first film. After a short diversion, in which Gary Busey delivers his two days of work on the film as a doomed hillbilly, we…
View original post 520 more words
Snow White and the Huntsman Review (Kirk Haviland)
Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Starring Charlize Theron, Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, Sam Claflin and Bob Hoskins
Written by Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock and Hossien Amini
Directed by Rupert Sanders
2012’s second reinvention of the classic Snow White tale, Snow White and the Huntsman, arrives in theaters this week hoping it can knock Will Smith out of the top slot. The movie unabashedly borrows from a multitude of sources, a more apt title may be Snow White and the Neverending Story of the Fellowship of the Chronicles of Narnia, but this is not necessarily something to be reviled as it produces a movie much better than my expectations.
We start with a Hemsworth narrated prologue in which we hear the origins of this version’s Snow White character. Snow White is a princess whose mother has passed away while she was still a child. Her father, the King, is…
View original post 632 more words
Death of the Video Store?
An Article i wrote a month ago that caused quite the reaction!
With the news a short time ago that Rogers has decided to pull out of the video rental marketplace Canada has found itself somewhere it has not been in decades, without a nation-wide video rental chain. This is a turn of events that most in the industry have seen coming for a while, but the question is whether it’s actually a step forward or a step backward for the industry. I must confess, being a former Blockbuster Canada employee, my opinion on this issue will be informed but also biased. That said, I am going to try to explore this issue from an open mind.
I can remember a 12 year-old version of myself excitedly making the long trek to the video store with money from my parents; finally able to pick out exactly what I wanted. The aisles of VHS tapes lining the store with covers that hinted at…
View original post 1,025 more words
Summer Movie Preview Part 1
I know, I know. The Avengers has already broke records everywhere, and you’re doing a summer preview now? I must confess that I’m a bit of a traditionalist in that I feel the real summer season starts on Victoria Day in Canada/Memorial Day in the US. And since we recently had Victoria Day in Canada, it seems like as good a time as any for this article (ed – apologies, posting this a bit late). I’ll try to give indie/smaller releases their due along with the blockbusters. Ultimately, everything on here will be stuff that intrigues me…in either a good or bad way.
Ed – Two of the Movie Junkie’s picks already have reviews by him, MIB3 and Chernobyl Diaries.
JUNE
The first Piranha (from 2010, not the James Cameron version I have yet to see) was a guilty pleasure. Will…
View original post 635 more words
Deer Hunter Review
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Starring Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, John Cazale and Meryl Streep.
Written by Michael Cimino, Deric Washburn, Louis Garfinkle and Quinn K. Redeker
Directed by Michael Cimino
During the calendar year of 2012 a variety of film bloggers and writers across the city of Toronto, including those at The Matinee, Toronto Screenshots and Eternal Sunshine of the Logical Mind, have been taking part in a yearlong series called “The Blind Spot Series”, where we as critics make a list of films that in one circle or another are deemed to be classics that we yet to see, and review them from the perspective of the first time viewer. Well here at Entertainment Maven we felt like it was time to join in on the fun. For this month’s viewing I, the Movie Junkie, will be taking a look at the 1978 Academy Award…
View original post 674 more words
Men IN Black 3 Review
Starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Alice Eve and Emma Thompson.
Written by Etan Cohen
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
Will Smith returns after a decade to the role that cemented him as a mega-star, that of Agent J in Men In Black. Having come out a year after Independence Day, it was Men in Black with its fun and charming story of a brash young agent in training and the stoic and stubborn partner training him so he could retire, that started Smith onto a string of hits that would make him the most bankable star in Hollywood. Well, its 15 years later and Smith’s J is still as wise cracking as ever and K is still not retired after being brought out of retirement in the dismal Men In Black 2. What antics will they get up to this time?
View original post 599 more words
Fright Nights: Viscera Film Festival
Fright Nights at the Projection Booth
Viscera Short Film Festival, May 15th 2012
For Kelly Stewart’s May presentation of Fright Nights at the Projection Booth in Toronto he decided to do something different. Hooking up with Curio Media and Director/Producer Karen Lam, Kelly was able to bring the Viscera Film Festival to Canada for the first time ever! Viscera is a traveling festival of short genre based films directed by women that was created to inspire and forward the amount of women involved in genre filmmaking. To top it off, Kelly managed to pull together a three-woman panel of directors for a Q&A/panel discussion after the film as well. This panel included Lam herself, whose short Doll Parts was showing, Dara Jade Moats whose short Adventure Girls 3 was also showing, and Jovanka Vuckovic, a local filmmaker who is in the midst of directing her first feature. A…
View original post 424 more words
Little Terrors 9: Altered Reality
Little Terrors 9 – Altered Reality
May 12th 2012, Projection Booth, Toronto
For the ninth edition of Justin McConnell’s Little Terrors series, Justin had a much harder time getting the night of genre shorts to the screen. Justin had some issues with clearance and ratings from the Film Board that needed to be sorted out before they could continue along. Once all the issues had been settled and the announcements made I very happily made the familiar jaunt down to the Projection Booth for the programme, on a rare Saturday night this time out, but I was still able to meet up with and converse with all the regulars. Also, fellow blogger over at The Horror Section, Jay Clarke, was going to debut his short ‘Orange’ this evening as well. Supporting another blogger’s project was a another great reason to attend.
Justin managed to put together another…
View original post 406 more words
Chernobyl Diaries Review
Staring Devin Kelley, Jonathan Sadowski, Jesse McCartney, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Dimitri Diatchenko, Nathan Phillips and Ingrid Bloso Berdal.
Written by Oren Peli, Shane Van Dyke and Carey Van Dyke
Directed by Bradley Parker
Back in 2007 writer/director/producer Oren Peli scared up massive box office returns and multiple sequels with his creepy little found-footage epic Paranormal Activity. Chernobyl Diaries marks the first post-Paranormal project we get from Peli, though for his next directorial effort we’ll have to wait for Area 51, due later this year. The question remains, will Paranormal Activity be the launching of a new talent, or will Peli’s name go down with the likes of M. Night Shyamalan – the once promising now mocked director of the Sixth Sense.
Chernobyl Diaries starts with a found-footage style montage of Chris (McCartney), his girlfriend Natalie (Dudley), and their friend Amanda (Kelley) as they make their way across…
View original post 669 more words
The Loved Ones Review
Rue Morgue Cinemacabre at the Toronto Underground Cinema
Starring Xavier Samuel, Robin Mcleavy, Victoria Thane, Richard Wilson, Jessica MacNamee and John Brumpton
Written and Directed by Sean Byrne
MINOR SPOILERS
Yes, it’s that time of the month once again, as the guys from Rue Morgue take over the confines of the Toronto Underground Cinema. As usual, all the familiar faces are there to greet me as we all prepare for the cinematic treat that is The Loved Ones. Unlike last month’s Rue Morgue presentation, I had seen The Loved Ones years before at the Midnight Madness showing as part of TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival for those who aren’t familiar). I’ve been singing its praises for years and a chance to see it once again projected on 35MM was a chance I could not pass up. After catching up with the Underground guys and Rue…
View original post 494 more words
Battleship Review (Kirk Haviland)
Starring Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgård, Brooklyn Decker, Rihanna, Tadanobu Asano and Liam Neeson
Written by Erich and Jon Hoeber
Directed by Peter Berg
After a brief hiatus I have returned with a review that has had my head spinning. How do I talk about Battleship? Quite possibly the loudest and most annoyingly inconsequential film of the last decade, Battleship makes no apologies for its “script” which is a collage of the worst film clichés. But did we really expect anything else from a movie based on a board game?
Battleship starts with the brothers Hopper, Alex (Kitsch) and Stone (Skarsgard), in a bar while Stone laments the fact that Alex is a screw up who can’t stay employed. In walks Samantha Shane (Decker), whose request for a chicken burrito leads to Alex breaking into a closed convenience store for one to give her (yes, you read that right)…
View original post 578 more words
A Little Bit Zombie Review (Kirk Haviland)
Starring Kristopher Turner, Crystal Lowe, Shawn Roberts, Kristen Hager, Emilie Ullerup and Stephen McHattie.
Directed by Casey Walker
Direct off its win at the Canadian Film Fest last month, devoted to Canadian indie film, A Little Bit Zombie has taken a different tact to releasing the film to the masses. By self-distributing, the creators of the film have decided to roll the film out across the country with special screenings and the hope that they will inspire longer runs in the following weeks. I got to attend one of these screenings at the Toronto Underground Cinema and am here to tell you that this film deserves your support.
A Little Bit Zombie starts off with Max (McHattie) and Penelope (Ullerup), a pair of zombie hunters that use a mystical orb to help track their targets, in the middle of a zombie swarm. After the carnage…
View original post 471 more words
MOVIE JUNKIE TO'S Entertainment Fix 