Non-Review: He's Just Not That Into You (2009)

Director: Ken Kwapis
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Ginnifer Goodwin, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Connelly

Before getting started, I just want to make two things clear. First, I only watched this movie because it was on TV, there was nothing else on, and I was making dinner anyway so it was more background noise than anything else. Second, this will just be a few observations rather than a proper review because a) the plot and characters are so thin, and b) I find it hard to take a movie seriously when it rejects the very premise on which it is built, rendering each and every plot development moot.

Review: Super 8 (2011)

* * * 1/2
Director: J.J. Abrams
Starring: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Riley Griffiths, Kyle Chandler, Ron Eldard

Summer movies tend to have a particularly short shelf life; they open big and then (and often immediately after opening weekend) fade away in favour of the next big thing. A lot of the time this fate is utterly deserved, but occasionally a movie comes along that merits staying power and could possibly continue to foster an audience throughout the summer and into the fall, the kind of movie that you might actually return to in later years. It's appropriate that Super 8 should be one of those movies, given that it's a throwback to late 70s/early 80s Spielberg movies, the kind made at a time before movies earned 60% of their box office on opening weekend.

Friday's Top 5... Movie Reboots

#5: The Sum of All Fears

I realize that I'm in the minority on this one, but I really liked the attempt at relaunching the Jack Ryan series with Ben Affleck. Seriously, check it out: it's actually a pretty good movie.

Canadian Film Review: Score: A Hockey Musical (2010)

* * *
Director: Michael McGowan
Starring: Noah Reid, Allie MacDonald, Stephen Hattie, Olivia Newton-John

Score: A Hockey Musical represents the big conundrum of Canadian cinema. It is said that the reason Canadians don't have more opportunity to see Canadian films is that when Canadian films are released, audiences don't go to see them. Score had what most Canadian films lack in that it was heavily promoted and had a really wide release. The problem? The promotion for it made it look unforgiveably cheesy, an amalgamation of what we would imagine people outside of Canada assume that Canadian film is all about, and audiences stayed away. Having now seen the film, I have to say that while it is a bit cheesy, it's also very enjoyable and less unfathomably earnest than the trailers made it seem and I have to assume that its failure is not a failure of Canadian cinema or Canadian audiences, but a failure of marketers to understand the audience.

Ebert's Greats #12: The Thin Man (1934)

* * * *
Director: W. S. Van Dyke
Starring: William Powell, Myrna Loy

The Thin Man is the kind of movie people mean when they say, "They don't make them like that anymore" (though that may not remain true, as a remake is in the works). A witty comedy/mystery, The Thin Man is one of the best films to come out of the 1930s (and that's no faint praise) and features one of the greatest film pairings of all time.