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Mommy: a love-hate experience I had mixed feelings about

Right, where to begin. Mommy, the latest work of French-Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan, plays like a hyper-saturated soap opera underscored with Greek tragedy and just a dash of plot-convenient alternate universe social community.

Set in a Canada where its legal to indefinitely commit problem kids at the age of sixteen, Mommy revolves around Diane “Die” Després (Anne Dorval), a gutsy, sometimes glamorous single mum who, first we see her, is stepping out a car wreck; a few minutes later Die’s smacking gum and staring down a teacher who questions her ability to look after her troubled son, Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon).…

Ant-Man is disposable, throwaway fun, but it might make you think twice next time you step on a bug

Marketed as this year’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man isn’t as quirky or out-there as its intergalactic predecessor — no Blue Swede on the soundtrack here.

In the unlikely hero department we have Paul Rudd, unsurprisingly immensely likeable as Scott Lang, a scrappy ex con who favors a wry smile over wisecracking and is trying to get his life back on track.…

Control freak, egotist, critical genius: As Life Itself shows, Roger Ebert was very much the director of his own life.

Critics are rarely beloved creatures. There’s always the impression they’re leeching off the back of the real creatives. It might be a symbiotic relationship, but, at best, they’re considered a necessary evil.

But not in the case of Roger Ebert.…

Man From UNCLE is stylish but hardly likely to shake up Bond

The second blockbuster based on a ‘60s spy series to hit this summer, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. provides a stylish jaunt back to the Cold War.

Following a red-tinted title sequence that provides a potted history of recent U.S-Russia relations, we find ourselves in 1963.…

Love & Mercy is a not inconsiderable blessing from the music biopic genre

Has there been any sub-genre of drama more reliable in recent years than the music biopic?

They give the chance for charismatic character actors like Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard to take on larger-than-life personalities undergoing the trials and tribulations of fame and fortune.

…

Slow West, my son: Go see

The genre in which John Wayne once set out to kill his niece because she’d had hands laid on her by an “Injun” has become more reflective in recent years; elegiac even.

The Western is now less concerned with drawling former Confederates and more about allegory, about the decline of myth and the uncertain rise of civilization al a Unforgiven or The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.…

For a film about a haunting, Poltergeist (2015) is very much a non-entity.

How do you one-up Steven Spielberg?

Rumors have circulated for years that he was the creative force behind Poltergeist, as opposed to director-for-hire Tobe Hooper; perhaps not surprising given the ‘Berg’s reputation as arguably the foremost American director of all time.…

Terminator Genisys feels like a superfluous do-over for a franchise whose glory days are long behind it

2015 has so far been the year of the long-awaited sequel, from the motorized mayhem of Mad Max: Fury Road to the dino disaster flick that was Jurassic World.

Compared to the time that’s passed since the character of Max Rockatansky, and Islas Nublar and Sorna, last appeared on our screens — 29 years and 14 years respectively — it seems like only yesterday that we failed to thrill to the dubious charm (or lack thereof) of Terminator: Salvation.…

American Sniper has great performances but lacks vision

For an Academy Award Best Picture nominee, American Sniper is not without its problems.

Its 84-year-old director Clint Eastwood is known for being a slightly hawkish libertarian with a penchant for shouting at empty chairs (“penchant” might be overstating, but, as they say, “You f**k one sheep…”).…

Jurassic World is business as usual for the InGen Corporation

Is there any film whose special effects conjured up such a sense of awe and wonder as Jurassic Park (apart, perhaps, from Star Wars)?

Steven Spielberg’s 1993 installment — sandwiched between Hook and Schindler’s List — effectively gave mankind their first fully-rendered look at the fearfully great lizards (or “dinosaurs”) whose existence on Planet Earth preceded ours by some 65 million years.…