Grave Encounters 2 (John Poliquin) is a case of more is more: it’s stuffed with Satanism, child sacrifice, rat-eating and wonky, Escher-house physics. The sequel to the 2011 found-footage horror film opens with YouTube reviews of the original, including a broad pan by college film student Alex (Richard Harmon). When Alex receives an enticing message from another YouTube user claiming to know the real story behind Grave Encounters, he abandons the derivative torture porn film he’s working on to investigate. Grave Encounters 2 gleefully sends its cast of amateur filmmakers and horror buffs to their certain doom. With so much post-New Nightmare meta-horror desperate to compliment fans’ intelligence and genre savvy, it’s hard not to admire a horror movie that has the gall to exhibit unconditional contempt for its audience. 109 min.
Rating: NNNN (JS)
Opens Feb 15 at Carlton Cinema. See here for times.
Beautiful Creatures (Richard LaGravenese) seems like an odd choice for LaGravenese, screenwriter of The Fisher King and director of the atrocious Hilary Swank comedy P.S. I Love You. But he’s nicely suited to tease out the familial relationships within Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia’s book about a mortal teen (Alden Ehrenreich) who falls for a magical “caster” (Alice Englert) in a small South Carolina town, finding an intimate, slightly goofy tone that allows for a tender teen romance. Supporting players Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson ham it up on the sidelines along with bad-apple Emmy Rossum. LaGravenese isn’t quite as comfortable with big set pieces, so the film occasionally slips into a fugue state in which it’s possessed by Tim Burton’s flailing remake of Dark Shadows. But then the fever passes, and you can get back to enjoying yourself. 123 min.
Rating: NNN (NW)
Opens Feb 14 at 401 & Morningside, Beach Cinemas, Carlton Cinema, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Empire Theatres at Empress Walk, Grande – Steeles, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.
The Berlin File (Ryoo Seung-wan) is a slick, fast-paced espionage thriller about a North Korean “ghost” (Ha Jung-woo) running from the international intelligence community after a botched arms deal. It’s a labyrinth of switchbacks and double-crosses with a tangled plot that makes Infernal Affairs look like a simple tale of good guys and bad guys. It sometimes feels that writer-director Ryoo (The City Of Violence) is complicating things for the sake of complicating them. An absolutely awful performance from John Keogh as a CIA agent ruins a couple of key scenes, but for the most part, this is solid commercial entertainment, with a few nice observations about how impossibly convoluted the modern spy game has become. Some subtitles, with a surprising amount of English dialogue. 120 min.
Rating: NNN (NW)
Opens Feb 15 at Grande – Yonge, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.
A Glimpse Inside The Mind Of Charles Swan III (Roman Coppola) casts Charlie Sheen as a self-absorbed Los Angeles lothario whose life becomes a raging sea when his girlfriend (Katheryn Winnick) leaves him. A car accident lands our hero in the hospital, where he awaits the results of some tests and plunges into various self-indulgent fantasies, as does the movie. This is the second feature from CQ writer-director Coppola – son of Francis, brother of Sofia and cousin of Jason Schwartzman, who turns up in Lenny Bruce drag as Swan’s best friend – and it’s a mess. Sheen’s well-cast as a lost boy pretending to be a man, and Winnick is terrific as a character who really only exists to call Swan on his bullshit. But most of Charles Swan III is given over to undercooked fantasies of Sheen/Swan dancing on his own grave or being hunted by women with murder in their hearts. It’s not a statement, it’s a shrug. Some subtitles. 86 min.
Rating: NN (NW)
Opens Feb 15 at Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.
A Good Day to Die Hard (John Moore) is a great big ugly Mack truck of shooting and exploding and yelling, as hack director Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, The Omen) throws out a quarter-century of goodwill toward a beloved action franchise in order to make an utterly generic action movie that just happens to star Bruce Willis’s indestructible John McClane. The plot’s an incoherent mess designed to pair McClane with his estranged adult son (Jai Courtney), who’s secretly a CIA agent charged with rescuing an imprisoned Russian billionaire (Sebastian Koch), and have them reconcile under fire. But Moore’s so in love with his cataclysmic action sequences (and so heedless of the collateral damage, which is fairly disturbing for this series) that he’s forgotten to include the character details that might make us care about any of it. As for the ending, it turns out the line between “preposterous” and “outright stupid” ain’t that fine after all. Some subtitles. 97 min.
Rating: NN (NW)
Opens Feb 14 at 401 & Morningside, Beach Cinemas, Carlton Cinema, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Empire Theatres at Empress Walk, Grande – Steeles, Humber Cinemas, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.
Safe Haven (Lasse Hallström) is another Nicholas Sparks adaptation like the rest: a melodramatic romance layered with globs of over-sweetened sentiment. This particular confection is directed by the man behind The Cider House Rules and Chocolat, so expect to be diabetic when it’s all over. Julianne Hough (looking delicious) stars as a young runaway, taking refuge in a small town with Josh Duhamel’s widower. The reason she’s on the run is kept secret, a typical Sparks device to frame and then complicate the lovers’ cooing. Count on many more Sparksian gimmicks: sun-kissed shots through moss-lined trees, a canoe ride that accentuates the sensual sounds of paddling through water, a rainstorm that sets the mood for fornication. The theatre will be so fertile with romance it could pollinate a bouquet of roses. 115 min.
Rating: NN (RS)
Opens Feb 14 at 401 & Morningside, Beach Cinemas, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Grande – Steeles, Grande – Yonge, Humber Cinemas, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Mississauga, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale, Varsity. See here for times.
Shadows of Liberty (Jean-Philippe Tremblay) aims to warn us about the dangers of corporate media and the inevitable compromising of the news-gathering process that results when five or six companies own all the media organs. But director Tremblay fails to build a coherent thesis, relying instead on innuendo and accusation – and creepy music – to score imaginary points, just like Fox News does. The worst thing is, I actually do believe mass media is in danger of being neutered by corporate ownership, but I can’t endorse this poorly constructed documentary solely because we’re on the same side. Some subtitles. 93 min.
Rating: NN (NW)
Opens Feb 15 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.
Escape From Planet Earth 3D (Cal Brunker) is an animated feature from a first-time director about a heroic astronaut who answers an SOS call from a baddie alien planet, featuring the voices of Brandon Fraser, Sarah Jessica Parker and Ricky Gervais. Review February 16 at nowtoronto.com/movies. 89 min.
Opens Feb 15 at 401 & Morningside, Beach Cinemas, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Empire Theatres at Empress Walk, Grande – Steeles, Humber Cinemas, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Mississauga, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times. See here for times.
The Metropolitan Opera: Rigoletto Live is a live high def performance from the Met of Michael Mayer’s new production of the tragic Verdi opera, set in Las Vegas in the 1960s. 211 min.
Opens Feb 16 at Beach Cinemas, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Eglinton Town Centre, Grande – Yonge, Queensway, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Mississauga, SilverCity Yonge. See here for times.
Move To Move – Netherlands Dance Theatre Live is a high def performance from acclaimed troupe Nederlands Dans Theater 1, with choreography by resident choreographers Sol León and Paul Lightfoot and Ohad Naharin. 168 min.
Opens Feb 17 at Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Grande – Yonge, Queensway, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Yonge. See here for times.
