I set myself up for a Helen Mirren double-bill by watching this movie and The Tempest back to back. I had heard good things about The Debt but was hesitant to watch it in the theatres because it seemed to have that retro Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy vibe (and I hated that movie). Who knew…

I was a fan of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, so I was excited that maybe this was another movie like that. Moulin Rouge fans might appreciate the musical numbers, but Burlesque is not nearly as imaginative or interesting as the Nicole Kidman classic. This is largely a vanity project for Christina Aguilera (with a little…

While it was definitely not the movie that I had expected, Catfish was also much more engrossing than I expected. I didn’t know much about the movie going in, but I thought that it was a mockumentary. Actually (despite some controversy around the question), it’s a straight documentary. Nev Schulman, a New York photographer, receives…

Unknown is the kind of plot-twisting action thriller that I used to love watching (still do, but good ones are not as common these days). Liam Neeson stars as Dr. Martin Harris, a scientist visiting Berlin with his wife (played, quite poorly I might add, by Mad Men‘s January Jones) for a biotech conference. He…

After 10 years, it is no surprise that the film series which has perfected the “cartosterone” sub-genre of action flick is back for a celebratory fifth instalment, but in honour of its love of number-play, here are Five Things that did surprise me about Fast Five. Casting Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the nemesis was…