Snowpiercer

13 Saturday Sep 2014

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I am a hat, you are a shoe. I belong on the head, you belong on the foot. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.

by Thom Yee

Snowpiercer images courtesy of RADiUS-TWC

Snowpiercer images courtesy of RADiUS-TWC

One summer movie you probably didn’t see or even contemplate over the last few months is Snowpiercer. For its North American theatrical release, the film opened in a grand total of eight locations, followed by a slightly wider release to 150 mostly art house theatres the next week, and straight to video-on-demand services the week after that. All of which suggests a real piece of crap, but It’s also a piece that broke box office records in South Korea during its initial release in the summer of 2013, and has gone on to earn $100 million worldwide. A sci-fi actioner starring Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton and John Hurt — in what’s kind of an odd mirroring of Only Lovers Left Alive, another art house movie I reviewed recently, only swap out Captain America for Loki — you might ask what happened given its overseas pedigree and potential mainstream appeal. Surely if there had been any concerted effort at all to market the movie, some people would have seen it. Perhaps so, but as with all things that sound stupid in show business, the answer comes down to yet more Hollywood Upstairs Accounting. Continue reading →

Ghostbusters II

06 Saturday Sep 2014

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We’re back!  And with booty ghosts!

by Thom Yee

Ghostbusters II images courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Ghostbusters II images courtesy of Columbia Pictures

It was thirty years ago that Ghostbusters was released on an unsuspecting populace, and the world was never the same. Because the world is never the same. Frankly speaking and if nothing else, we change results just by measuring them, so of course the world was never the same. The film, both a critical and commercial success, rocketed Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis to superstardom, while earning two Academy Award nominations, a top thirty rank on the American Film Institute’s list of best comedies, and launched an entire industry of cartoons, toys, and various other cultural minutiae.

But, while this year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the original film’s release, with all the commensurate screenings still available in your area, what a lot of people have forgotten is that this thirtieth anniversary is also the twenty-fifth anniversary of Ghostbusters II. Continue reading →

Say Anything (1989)

30 Saturday Aug 2014

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by Grace Crawford

All images courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

All images courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

There’s an old saying that goes something like “All women marry men exactly like their fathers.”

Personally, I believe something that sounds similar but is in fact pretty different: that women, whether consciously or not, choose their partners based on their own experience with their fathers. And what I mean by that is that women’s relationships with men will always be coloured by their relationships with their fathers.

Even if they haven’t seen Say Anything, everyone knows about that one scene in the movie where John Cusack stands outside a girl’s window and holds a boom box over his head. It’s an iconic scene that’s set the standard for romantic gestures in modern relationships, even though nobody actually has a boom box anymore, and the more I say it, the stupider the word “boom box” sounds.

From that one scene, it’s easy to extrapolate what the rest of the movie is about: it’s a love story. But what a lot of people — including me, until recently — don’t know about this movie is more than just “boy meets girl.” It’s a love triangle between a girl, her dad, and her boyfriend, and it’s far less creepy than it sounds.

Continue reading →

The Expendables 3

23 Saturday Aug 2014

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I’m Getting Too Old for These Sh*t Movies

by Thom Yee

The Expendables 3 images courtesy of Lionsgate

The Expendables 3 images courtesy of Lionsgate

I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. I was a pretty violent kid. But it wasn’t my fault.

My heroes killed dozens, sometimes hundreds (if there were sequels) in the name of… some reason that I’m sure was rational. Their child was kidnapped… their Kung Fu headmaster was poisoned by the hated rival Japanese Karate school… they were hired to take over security at a bar and bring order through any [throat-ripping] means necessary… and a lot of them were cops just driven too far by society’s breeding of a new kind of criminal. Whether they used guns, knives, makeshift weapons like steam pipes, or their bare fists of fury, they were masters of justifiable murder, disciples of vengeful deaths, bullet ballet virtuosos, often licensed to kill. Continue reading →

Groundhog Day (1993)

16 Saturday Aug 2014

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What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.

by Grace Crawford

poster

Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

My favourite Stargate episode is season 3, episode 14: “Window of Opportunity.” A lonely scientist tries to save his wife by going back in time, but he only succeeds in starting a time loop that repeats a chunk of the day over and over again. Both O’Neill and Teal’c are aware of what’s happening; at first they’re confused, then angry, then doing everything they’ve always wanted without fear of repercussions, then trying feverishly to fix the problem.

I always liked that episode because it married humour with an outlandish and unsolvable problem, while simultaneously dealing with the human condition and what it does when faced with the idea of no consequences. Basically — and I didn’t realize it until I watched Groundhog Day for the first time — I liked it because it mimicked said movie, only with familiar characters and context.

But for all that I liked “Window of Opportunity,” Groundhog Day was so much better. And even though technically it isn’t older than I am, I went ahead and reviewed it anyway.

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Simul-Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

10 Sunday Aug 2014

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by Thom Yee and Grace Crawford

What Thom Thought:

They Got My Dick Message!

Images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

I can’t believe how skeptical people were of this movie.

Before the summer started — before your winter soldiers and days of future pasts and ages of extinction — I told people that the only summer movie I had faith in was Guardians of the Galaxy. And every one I talked to said that they weren’t so sure. And I’m not trying to be that guy just because I called this one, just like I called Finding Nemo in the 2003 summer of the second Matrix, X-Men 2 and Terminator 3, because I’m also the guy who thought John Carter was a decent movie and that Blackberry really was going to make a comeback last year (and besides that, who remembers anything about 2003 other than Freaky Friday?).

I think by now that Marvel Studios has come a long way towards earning our trust.

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Only Lovers Left Alive

02 Saturday Aug 2014

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The blood is the life… and I can’t wait to lie down.

by Thom Yee

only-lovers-left-alive-poster

Images courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Over the years, I’ve found that the biggest difference between what we see on screen and what we live in real life aren’t things like story, significant action, or inciting incidents. The details might differ, the circumstances may be less extraordinary, but if you look (and sometimes strain), most of our lives are actually full of those things. No, the real difference is character. Screenplays eliminate redundancies, strengthen those remaining to the point of obvious importance, and leave their main characters in a place where they’ve changed. The people in movies and TV shows serve the themes and tell us something about their world. They’re distinct and important and completely embody who they’re supposed to be, be they mentors, horrible bosses, or favourite uncles. And those are all incredibly rare people to find in real life. Continue reading →

Heathers (1988)

27 Sunday Jul 2014

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Mean Girls with Murder

by Grace Crawford

All images courtesy of Cinemarque Entertainment and New World Pictures.

All images courtesy of Cinemarque Entertainment and New World Pictures. 

When I was in high school (yes, I realize a lot of my reviews start this way), it wasn’t one of those massive schools where no one knows your name and a bunch of uber-popular people rule over it all. There were about 60 kids in my graduating class, and I knew every one of them by name, even if I wasn’t friends with them.

There was no ruling caste. No one was that influential. True, it was cliquey in that friends tended to hang out with friends and didn’t stray into other organized groups, and the kids whose parents were more involved in the running of the school saw more benefits than the kids whose parents weren’t. But for the most part those kids were pretty nice people, so I don’t think anyone minded too much.

So I feel like maybe I missed out on some crucial high school experience, because movies keep telling me that everyone at school is either a queen bee or a nerd. If you’re the former you’re a b*tch, and if you’re the latter then you’d best get out of the way. And that’s the world where Heathers takes place.

Continue reading →