Stephen Cole

A comedy should provoke more than smiles. Should have characters instead of show-offs. Although often charming, Micmacs seems so pleased with itself that it hardly needs an audience.

Handsomely mounted, emotionally involving sci-fi movies don't often show up in the darkened galaxies of our theatre chains. So Alvart's English-language debut is definitely a film you want to catch on the big screen. Just don't sit too close, lest you end up with a dose of pandorum.

Broken Arrow conforms faithfully to the tongue-in-cheek, post-Die Hard action genre, with the usual spectacularly choreographed action sequences and rudiments of a story line. Even considering the meagre demands of the genre, though, character and plot seem woefully underbaked and the reliance on improbable solutions soon makes the groans of incredulity outnumber the gasps. [9 Feb 1996, p.C1]

The rare sequel that is better than the original.

So Dead Snow fulfills one zombie-movie prerequisite. It's different.

Bourne fans will find much to enjoy about The Bourne Legacy, even if they are forced to do without the title character.

Watching 9 , we know how 8 feels. Sci-fi fans will find heaven in Shane Acker's feature-film debut.

The mistake filmmakers Tucker and Epperlein (Gunner Palace) make here is assuming that fighters reveal their true characters in discussing their craft, when in fact just the opposite occurs.

Max Manus (the title role is played by Aksel Hennie) feels so familiar that audiences watching it are likely to experience a numbing sense of déjà vu. Nothing seems particularly fresh or involving.

The film's best and most carefully shaded performance belongs to Bacon.

We leave this movie hoping to see Miller and Lewis together again soon.

There's the roller-disco music and skating, which isn't so much hot as a hoot.

Though often fascinating and beautiful to look at, Surviving Progress falls into the adapting-a-book-into-a-movie trap. Trying to do too much too fast.

The Trotsky goes down easily and, for what it’s worth, is better mannered than most contemporary youth comedies.

Three years in the making, seems fussed over and, occasionally, a little dull.

Letting Shrek get grumpy again has freshly animated this cartoon series.

It's no fun looking after a determined, self-justified alcoholic; or even watching him waste away. Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life accepts its subject on his own terms. And the compromise feels like capitulation before its hero's last record spins to a close. The death of a ladies man is pretty grim sport after the ladies have gone.

There is also a capable, wisecracking stewardess (Julianna Margulies) and, what a surprise, a steward who appears to be doing a Paul Lynde impersonation.

Here's something you don't see every day: a high-school comedy for old poops.

The Intouchables works as a crowd-pleaser not because it's true, but because it's a plausible enchantment.

All outrageous stuff. Gatien's story is worth telling. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that director Billy Corben presents it in such a methodical fashion.

Are any of his stunts funny? Yes, one scene is worthy of Borat and Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops.

Jumping the Broom also benefits from a great soundtrack (Al Green, Aretha, El DeBarge, Curtis Mayfield).

Too much diary, not enough movie.

How to Eat Fried Worms arrives just in time to placate preteen boys who resent being unable to see the frankly more adult though equally immature "Snakes on a Plane."

No, there isn't anything wrong with comfort entertainment. Then She Found Me could have, should have been something special - a "Knocked Up" for weary boomers. The only hitch is that it isn't all that entertaining. Nor comforting for that matter.

The result, which could be entitled There's Something About Curly, is an unabashedly moronic celebration of slap shtick.

They're not much company, our Marcus and Esca. But there we are, mucking through crazy Scotland with them.

Dark Shadows only meaningful relationship is between Depp and his audience. He's a persona now, no longer an actor. And the kick here, as always, is watching him try on funny accents and hairdos.

A bad-cop, worse-cop movie.

A meagre, occasionally funny affair.

If this sounds intriguing, we should add that System of a Down is a lousy live band. And director Garapedian, for all her public-minded zeal, isn't capable of corralling her interviews and opinions into a coherent polemic.

Though bathed in ecclesiastical light and a work of obvious craft and ambition, Bee Season is grimly serious and rather full of itself.

Contains fascinating footage – material from the 1980s that looks to be the work of angry, ancient Norse warriors. There is, however, almost no perspective here. Perhaps the filmmakers succumbed to a condition associated with a city east of Oslo – the Stockholm Syndrome.

A film willing to cheat whatever way necessary to scare you... The good news is that once you leave the theatre, you'll never think of Boogeyman again.

Fails to ever come alive as a human comedy in the manner of the best mockumentaries.

One of this enlightened B-movie's many pleasures is French director Jean-François Richet's handling of atmosphere and setting. Shot almost entirely at night in a blinding snowstorm, the crime drama is an intriguing remodelling of a classic film noir.

Like "Rebel", directed by Nicholas Ray, this film excels at capturing the nervous posturing of adolescent boys marking their territory by pissing on each other's shoes.

A football story that deserves a penalty flag every other play for piling on the sentiment.

Like most modern action films, Shooter is too explicit, more interested in mayhem than motive.

Palindromes is a cracked American picaresque.

An enjoyable time-waster, distinguished by an unexpectedly sharp comic turn by McConaughey, lots of boisterous horseplay and some stirring emotional clinches. All in all, an entirely serviceable night out for buddies looking to locate hidden feelings.

A splendid adventure sure to thrill children and fantasy buffs, while leaving everyone else passably entertained.

An okay thriller with lots of smart flourishes, The Next Three Days has us hooked early on but never quite gets us in the boat.

Young male earthlings should like everything about Race to Witch Mountain. Just make sure you race your caffeinated charges to the washrooms right after the movie to defuel so there won't be any accidents on the space shuttle home.

Playing a blonde with her roots showing, Beckinsale seems up for a scrap, but the film gives her nothing to do but get clobbered.

It's like flipping through five years of dog calendars.

It should be a better, more authentic movie, considering that screenwriters Maupin and his ex-partner, Terry Anderson, are retelling parts of their own story here.

A big, bloated, though frequently engaging gangster movie, Kill the Irishman should properly be viewed late night on TV, flipping back and forth between the film, David Letterman and a west-coast ball game.

David Bowie, flaunting a Marianne Faithfull hairdo, stars in Jim Henson's latest puppety film, the flagrantly unoriginal Labyrinth. [1 Jul 1986, p.A1]

Last Night is a New York morality play: A film in love with (lower) Manhattan that is suspicious of real romance. What it lacks is Allen's sense of horseplay; his appetite for lunatic adventure. When you take a bite of the Big Apple, you're not supposed to nibble.

Though The Stoning of Soraya M.'s heart is in the right place, its head is lost in storm clouds of anger.

One smart thing Green's character Ezekiel does is split from Sex Drive as soon as his two scenes are over.

Starbuck is unapologetic genre filmmaking with a winning performance from its lead, Huard ( Bon Cop, Bad Cop), a shambling, likeable comedian who can flip, flop and fly off a diving board while maintaining his sex appeal.

Halfway through, everyone starts drinking heavily and the film turns into agreeably sloppy fun. (Isn't that always the way – class reunions often perk up when someone spikes the punch.)

A furious 90-minute trailer of a movie that exceeds the speed limit for action films established by Quentin Tarantino's recent "Grindhouse."

It's amazing to see, but potentially unsettling. Green is now 37. And it may be more than some mothers can take, imagining themselves cleaning up after their "little boy" when he's crowding 40.

Except for one memorable interlude, the film just doesn't have near enough fun blasting spitballs at "Pirates of the Caribbean."

The humour in Accepted is maddeningly safe.

Fans of both Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe should not be too bummed with the mild sedative that is A Good Year.

Sounds promising. What a disappointment then to report that Just Like Heaven is more like purgatory, a sweating, straining attempt to marry the wisecracking fury of the modern sitcom to the classic Rock-Doris, Cary-Kate romantic comedy.

Brian and Dom could drive from L.A. to Mexico City and back blindfolded, but would require a GPS to find the zipper of a dress. The only time they smile here is when they are alone in a garage, tinkering with their dream cars.

The film has one sly, ominous touch Peckinpah would have liked. David is writing a script on the defence of Stalingrad, a battle that swallowed two million lives. Otherwise, the new version is a vigilante action film bereft of subtlety or restraint.

Best when Fraser is on screen. Ian McKellen, who starred with Fraser in "Gods and Monsters," called him the most natural actor he'd worked with, marvelling at Fraser's ability to disappear into roles.

Hugh Grant's Martin Tweed is nowhere as menacing (or interesting) as the callous bruiser who makes every episode of American Idol a chilling psychotic adventure.

It's possible to admire the performances of stars Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger in The Burning Plain , even as you backpedal from the film, hoping the ponderous megasoap will just go away.

Still, what makes Sly's new film fascinating is that, 35 years after he created and starred in the ultimate little-boy fantasy, "Rocky," Stallone remains such a guileless, big-dreaming innocent.

The narrative line itself rambles increasingly down a path toward tawdry melodrama, defeating the impact of the handsome visuals and finely etched performances. [13 Jan 1995]

Although In My Country is charged with moments of grace and feeling, the film is ultimately betrayed by the clunky Jackson-Binoche romance.

Anyone interested in a no-seatbelts, out-of-control action flick will find much to enjoy in Faster; although even they may prefer seeing it in Blu-Ray at home, which would allow for trips to the fridge for fuel when the film begins to idle in the last reel.

At two hours and 34 minutes, CC2C is too much by a half: too much dancing and fighting and too much footage of the Great Wall of China. It does, however, have a vulgar energy and many of the jokes work.

Still, even Romero's staunchest fans might conclude their hero is going through the motions here. Yes, almost like a zombie.

An inferior "Napoleon Dynamite." Call it Napoleon Firecracker. The film steals one of the best laughs of Jon Heder's surprise 2004 hit, the scene where Napoleon nosedives over a bicycle jump, and stretches the gag into an 86-minute movie.

Actually, as Eddie Murphy PG comedies go, Meet Dave isn't bad. In fact, it's kind of sweet, innocent almost – kid-friendly in the best sense.

Today, the 1985 novel is the No. 1-selling paperback in North America. Sadly, the movie is a bonfire where the novel was a blaze of fireworks.

Frozen would get props for a novel plot, except that its storyline appears to be ski-lifted from the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode where Larry is stuck on a chairlift with an Orthodox Jewish woman who is terrified of being seen with a man after sunset.

Why bother suffering through 90 minutes of bad company for a few moments of holiday cheer? Especially when you can still stay home alone and watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" somewhere on TV.

What the film needs more than anything is Perry's alter ego, Medea – a rampaging bowling ball who might knock all these stiff, upright characters spinning.

Death Race is our unshaven Brit hero's inevitable comeuppance: The Prison Job.

A botched adult romantic comedy that strands its leading player, and its audience, in a wearying, sitcom-slight battle of the sexes.

As for Vaughn, he seems exhausted by his strenuous efforts to bring a few sparks of spontaneity to such an overcalculated Christmas product.

Horror fans anticipating grisly laughs are in for a jolt. Because the new Last House, though terrifying, is never, ever fun.

Yes, The Mysterious Island is everything a 12-year-old boy could want – endless adventure involving a reckless adolescent hero, with a pretty girl in a clinging T-shirt around to watch him struggle.

Barrymore's charm helps make Beverly Hills Chihuahua a congenial family outing.

Who wants to watch any film where Sarandon, the sexiest 60-year-old woman alive, is first prize in a corn-eating contest?

Try not to be in the same room as Jesus Henry Christ. At the very least run when the first fire alarm sounds.

The film has enough laughs to stock a 90-minute entertainment. Unfortunately it throws out enough material to fill five comedies. And most of the jokes die in silence, throwing off a flop-sweat tsunami that carries away Short's best work.

It's an action-comedy. It's in 3-D. There's a video-game tie-in. Throw in a fluorescent Slushie from the candy counter and your eight-year-old will be in heaven.

A farther-fetched fantasy: In addition to asking we believe our loosely packed academic can play Rocky, Here Comes the Boom imagines a world in which butterball Everyman Scott and the fabulously lush Bella (Salma Hayek) might argue and bill and coo and eventually fall in love.

The Virginity Hit is another slice of "American Pie," one more youth comedy that encourages its cast (and audience) to ridicule a fumbling, well-meaning teenager.

Perhaps the young performers are in such a good mood because they're liberated from having to play straight-as-a-ruler teen melodrama.

As for children's entertainment needs, well, having seen both "The Golden Compass" and Alvin and the Chipmunks with a full theatre of four- to 12-year-olds, this reviewer is honour-bound to report that Alvin wins the kids' vote, paws down.

The script is terrible - a confounding mish-mash of action-thriller chases, sci-fi travelogue and phony political intrigue.

There is no energy here. No sense of movie invention or fun.

Trespass is at least a suitable rest stop for his (Cage) anguish. An unapologetic B-movie that comes with lots of flashbacks, gunplay and shouting, it can easily be savoured and forgotten inside 90 minutes.

If 1911 doesn't impress as historical spectacle, neither does it rank high as a Jackie Chan film.

Scott means for his entertainment package to be hip, hysterical fun. But his stylistic embellishments and indiscriminate appetite for sensation crowds his title character right out of the film.

Shutter has the look and feel of a proper J-horror film. Tokyo is seen as a series of gloomy gun metal skies. And the acting is more subdued than in Hollywood horror movies.