NOW PLAYING
Capsule reviews of first-run films now showing at Calgary theatres
Anna Karenina
out of five
Joe Wright’s stylized remounting of the Leo Tolstoy story of infidelity is sumptuous, although its artificial theatricality removes us from the story’s emotions. Keira Knightley is beautiful and gawky as the unhappily married Anna, but Aaron Taylor-Johnson seems too feckless for her lover Vronsky.
Argo
Ben Affleck’s thriller recasts the Canadian Caper — the 1979 rescue of U.S. hostages in Iran — as a U.S.-led caper. He stars as a CIA agent who makes a fake movie so he can smuggle the Americans out disguised as Canadian filmmakers.
Chasing Ice
A stunning and often heartbreaking journey to the high Arctic, where the National Geographic photographer and geomorphologist James Balog trained his lenses on the changing landscape, Chasing Ice has one central ambition: To open your eyes to the reality of climate change.
Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell’s sprawling novel has been turned into an ungainly film that spans the centuries. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and others play multiple roles in an ambitious sci-fi extravaganza with a message — we are all connected — that hardly seems worth it.
Deadfall
Definitely not to be confused with the other “fall” movie at a theatre near you, Deadfall is one of those rare films that is difficult to describe, mostly because it’s hard to tell what it’s trying to be. Starring Eric Bana, Olivia Wilde, Kris Kristofferson, Sissy Spacek and Treat Williams.
Diana Vreeland: The Eye has to Travel
Born in 1903, decades before Wintour during La Belle Epoque in France, Vreeland came from an different age, when women were still carrying parasols and sporting bustles. By the time she died in 1989, Vreeland had not only embraced the sexual awakening of the 1960s, she was credited with
redefining the supermodel look.
Flight
Sharing similarities with his earlier film Cast Away, this Robert Zemeckis feature offers a spectacular start to what amounts to a survival story. Flight features Denzel Washington as a commercial pilot struggling to come clean after a tragic crash.
Hitchcock
Movies about the movies can be tediously self-indulgent. How can they not? They’re staring into the mirror and looking back at their glossy reflections, and feeling pretty sexy about what they see.
Killing Them Softly
Brad Pitt stars as a befuddled enforcer who comes to town to settle a score, but he’s detoured by incompetent sidekicks, a corporate liaison and a community lacking criminal expertise. Despite the blood, guts and graphic language, this Andrew Dominik movie has tons of style to help it rise above the generic.
Life of Pi
Oscar winner Ang Lee adapts the like-named bestselling novel by Yann Martel to the big screen in stunning, high-def 3-D. While the movie never works as well as we might want it to, as a result of some stilted scenes and some forced drama, Lee still manages to conjure enough cinematic magic to pull off this heavy mix of soulsearching and action-survival
Lincoln
Daniel Day-Lewis is persuasive as The Great Emancipator in Steven Spielberg’s high-quality biopic about the last few months of the U.S. president’s life. There’s a tone of reverence even as Lincoln is shown making underhanded deals to free the slaves, political machinations that give the film its intrigue.
The Man with the Iron Fists (not reviewed)
An adventure set in rural China about a blacksmith who must defend his village, starring Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu.
Not screened for critics in advance, but read the review in Saturday’s paper.
The Master
Paul Thomas Anderson creates an emotionally tense ode to postwar fragmentation in this riveting story of a sailor seeking his place in peacetime. Joaquin Phoenix is predictably unpredictable.
Midnight’s Children
Deepa Mehta takes on the vast contours of Salman Rushdie’s Booker Prize-winning novel about the birth of an independent India, and one boy who can conjure the voice of his generation through his unnaturally large nose.
Pitch Perfect
A Glee-type musical with a more comic sensibility. Anna Kendrick plays a college student who joins an a cappella singing group that’s trying to defeat the male team.
Playing for Keeps
A silly romantic comedy with Gerard Butler as a retired soccer star who attracts the attentions of all the wives — including those played by Uma Thurman and Catherine Zeta-Jones — in town. But he’s trying to reunite with his ex, played by Jessica Biel. Watching him fend off their advances is more humiliating than funny.
Red Dawn
A remake of the like-named action film about middle America being invaded — this time by North Korea — with only a feisty group of teenagers willing to go to war to stop them. It’s a paranoid fantasy that combines adolescent angst with survivalist fervour.
Rise of the Guardians
The wrapping is all primary colours, but beneath this slick, shiny and frequently frantic piece of holiday fantasy is a deeper message about the importance of personal responsibility. Jack Frost struggles with his new duty as a Guardian — a supernatural force that cares for all children in exchange for faith. The movie fails to find enough heart to move us at an emotional level — but it will dazzle the eyes.
Silver Linings Playbook
Bradley Cooper stars as a man who returns from a mental institution and tries to resume both his life and his marriage. Yet his wife has a restraining order against him and he’s not entirely stable. Pat (Cooper) is a raging loner who may or may not be redeemed by the love of a pretty good, but not entirely predictable, woman played by Jennifer Lawrence. Director David O. Russell sells the screwball side, and holds up the dramatic side as well.