02.29.08
Posted in Newspapers at 1:50 am by Greg
The Toronto Star, July 2007
They say a few weeks in the tropics does wonders for a person’s constitution - most come back with a slight increase in energy, a healthy tan and a few less wrinkles. But if your coworker comes back from vacation with a new head of hair, a larger bust line or devoid of that pesky heart condition that made them wheeze on the way to the water cooler, they’ve most likely taken advantage of what is emerging as a booming global trend - medical tourism (MT). Read the rest of this entry »
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02.28.08
Posted in Movie Reviews at 10:17 am by Greg
Swing High, Swing Low
**1/2 out of *****
Pity poor director Sam Raimi. In much the same way Peter Jackson went from schlock king (zobie gore-fest Dead Alive) to film god (Lord of the Rings), Raimi has gone from cheese king (demon gore-fest Evil Dead) to one of the most respected and trusted directors in Hollywood (he’s even suggested he might like to take over the reigns from Jackson on a Hobbit movie). No one was sure what he’d do with the Spiderman property, but when the first one turned out to be gold, and the second turned out to be gold with a side of diamonds, the heat was on - number three had better be good. For Spiderman 3, Raimi and team succeeded - mostly. What they made was an Armani suit worn by a sumo wrestler; it’s about as good as it could possibly be as it is, but would have been much better if it was a little leaner. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Movie Reviews at 10:16 am by Greg
A Force to be Reckoned With
****1/2 out of *****
George Lucas isn’t a very good director. That’s right, I said it. But what he can do better than nearly everyone else is tell stories that involve you and create characters that are real and interesting. I can’t imagine how he must feel this week; the story that he started telling 28 years ago is finally finished and his characters that are only slightly less well-known than Ronald MacDonald the world over will never be heard from again. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is easily the best of the three prequels and certainly good enough to convince more than a few people that it’s the best film in the series, period. Let the arguments begin. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Movie Reviews at 10:15 am by Greg
All Fluxed Up and No Place to Go
** out of *****
Begun as a series of anime-inspired shorts that aired on MTV in 1991 (and a subsequent regular series and graphic novel), Aeon Flux was a violent, sexual, kinetically charged series that pushed all kinds of boundaries and gained quite a large cult following. Unfortunately, the film adaptation is a busy, schizophrenic film that suffers from a messy script, bad directing and little resemblance to the source material. In a trend that’s all-too common of late, they went and pulled the Hollywood magic trick of turning an R into a PG. Butt-in-seat numbers go up, quality goes down and I’m left sitting in my chair wondering when they’re going to ignore the stupid kids and get back to making bad-ass sci-fi/action movies for adults. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Movie Reviews at 10:15 am by Greg
Rocky Mountain Sigh
**** out of *****
I remember back in 1997, I went to the theater to see The Jackal, with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere. There’s a scene where Willis, as the Jackal, has to kiss a gay man during a con he’s pulling, and I remember being alarmed by the severity of “Agggghhhh!!!” that went up when they shared a split-second lip peck. Granted that was in Calgary, Alberta, the whitest, red-neckest city around (ironically, the same place where Brokeback Mountain was filmed), but it was still a bit over the top. At any rate, it seems that a Hollywood movie with A-list stars that deals in detail with gay cowboys seems to present the fact that we’ve come a long way with equality issues since that time, and I can’t imagine a better movie being the one to bring it this far. Actually, for me to call it a ‘gay cowboy’ movie is a bit shallow and crude; kind of like calling Lawrence of Arabia a ‘movie about sand.’ Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Movie Reviews at 10:14 am by Greg
Rebel Without Pause
**** out of *****
For whatever reason, I was either too sheltered (doubt it), too young (probably) or just too unlucky (bingo) to be exposed to the music of Johnny Cash when I was growing up. I knew he was an influential country singer known as ‘the man in black,’ and that’s about it. But in a testament to just how good this movie is, as soon as I got home after the viewing, I looked up Mr Cash on Wikipedia to read more about him and immediately started downloading his entire catalog. It’s a treat to see a movie that not only tells you the story of a man, but does it in such a way as to create new fans that come at his music with a pre-existing level of respect. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Movie Reviews at 10:14 am by Greg
Revenge is Neat
***1/2 out of *****
“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” - Traditional proverb
Nowhere is this statement more true than in the year 2006 (well, it was probably really true during the Crusades, but I’m generalizing). You have to hand it to 20th Century Fox for having the balls to release a movie dealing with a shadowy figure who takes hostages and utters phrases like “blowing up a building can change the world.” Based on an 80’s comic serial by geek-god writer Alan Moore and artist David Lloyd, the weighty V for Vendetta is a literate movie that attempts to cover a lot of ground, dealing with issues such as the power an individual can wield over a crowd, where the line is drawn between security and control, and how cool knives can look when they fly through the air in slow motion toward a dude’s forehead. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Movie Reviews at 10:12 am by Greg
More Like Barely Mauve
½ out of *****
They finally did it. Usually, innovative films are noted for blurring the lines between something-and-something, like how Lord of the Rings blurred the line between action and fantasy. Instead, Ultraviolet manages to hone the line between video game and film into a laser-sharp mark of where filmmaking ends and computer graphics geeks take over. This is not a movie - it’s a video game intermission, a CGI monstrosity that is badly acted, terribly written, poorly shot, boring, confusing, illogical and stupid beyond reproach. I can’t think of a movie in recent memory that I’ve hated more than this. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Movie Reviews at 10:12 am by Greg
Let Your Axle Bone Slide
**/12 out of *****
For those of you that say movies aren’t educational, I say to you: Bah! If it weren’t for the triad of flicks in the Fast and Furious family, I never would have known that there exists a worldwide underground culture of people who pour thousands of dollars into their cars for the prestige of illegal drag racing. I also wouldn’t have known that all the men in the culture are gangstas, all the women are Penthouse models with clothes to match and everything - EVERYTHING - can be solved by racing cars. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Movie Reviews at 10:08 am by Greg
Audience - Shaken and Stirred
**** out of *****
My favorite Bond line ever was in 1964’s Goldfinger, when Bond was interrupted during a massage by a contact. He stopped his masseuse, smacked her on the ass and said “Give us a minute, darling. Man talk.” The words ‘cheesily sexist’ don’t even begin to do it justice, but it was also a testament to just why Connery made the role his own. Even with misogynist, dated lines like this, he could still make you believe he was a cold-blooded assassin. The new Bond movie takes this and runs with it, pulling back on the charming rogue routine and cranking up the brutal killer angle to eleven. But is that enough to resurrect the wilting franchise? While it misses a few marks, the answer is pretty solid yes - Bond is back and in top form for the 21st century. Read the rest of this entry »
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