No sex and no city makes Carrie a shrill bitch

Emma Ornholt

Sex and the City 2: Minimal sex, and even less city.

Robin Hood: An enchanting tale butchered horribly

Zara Urvashi Ramaniah

Russell Crowe can't hold a torch to the Merry Men of the 90s.

You want a sequel, you got it

Robert Downey Jr. and Mickey Rourke shoot to thrill

Guruchathram Ledchumanan

Iron Man 2 is not as strong as the first, but still captivates audiences.

Polanski returns to masterful form

Hitchcockian thriller stuns

Alex Mugford

The Ghost Writer Starring Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, and Kim Cattrall Entertainment One Ltd. 128 mins Rated PG The plot of The Ghost Writer sets off fireworks. In the beginning when a dead body washes ashore, the fuse ignites and it methodically burns down. In the end, it ignites into a glorious display of beauty in film. Fireworks...

Matt Damon should get Bourne again

Unsatisfying weapon of plot destruction

Jillian Sexton

Green Zone Starring Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, and Khalid Abdalla Universal 115 mins Rated 14A As much as I hate to rate a movie starring Matt Damon as anything less than perfection, I have to admit that Green Zone is a bit of a bust. Green Zone fulfills the comfortable American war-time story arc that we all know...

Chris Rock’s hilariously intriguing look at African-American hair

A woman’s hair is personal and political

Mildred Pierce

MUN Cinema Series What’s up in your hair? That’s the question behind Chris Rock’s documentary, an on-the-street look at the politics of African-American hair. Since millions of dollars are spent every day on products aimed at straightening the wave and the curl right out of one’s head, the question is also economic. So it is that in Good Hair, comedian...

Disquieting apprehension lurks in Cannes prize winner

Masterful film tackles the birth of fascism

Mildred Pierce

MUN Cinema Series The White Ribbon (or, as the original German title reads, Das weisse Band – Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte) comes to us this week from the director hailed by New York Times film critic A.O. Scott as, “One of the most exquisitely sadistic European filmmakers working today.” Michael Haneke’s name is synonymous with psychological thrillers. He is the darling...

Smoking caterpillar yields parental guidance advisory

Tim Burton takes you down a darker rabbit hole

Zaren White

Alice In Wonderland Starring Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Michael Sheen, Alan Rickman, and Stephen Fry Walt Disney Pictures 109 minutes Rated PG By Zaren White The psychedelic, nonsensical dreamscape that surrounds the story of Alice made Tim Burton’s directorship of a live-action adaptation no surprise. A master of the grotesque, whimsical, and bizarre,...

Zombies flip their lids

The Crazies is a competent genre film

Alex Mugford

The Crazies Starring Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Danielle Panabaker, and Joe Anderson Alliance 101 mins Rated 18A The serene farming town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa is the picture of All-American bliss – until a poisonous toxin makes its way into the town’s water supply, slowly turning its friendly bumpkins into creepy, zombie-like murderers. Trying to make sense of it all...

Riveting tale of Tolstoy and his woman

Christopher Plummer and Hellen Mirren get sexier at 60

Mildred Pierce

Col: MUN Cinema Series

Shutter makes my heart flutter

Scorsese’s stab at film noir draws first blood

Alex Mugford

Shutter Island Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, and Max Von Sydow Paramount 138 mins Rated 14A One of the most influential living American directors, Martin Scorsese has returned with the psychological film noir thriller Shutter Island. U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his partner, Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) have been summoned to Ashecliffe Hospital, a criminal sanatorium....

Don’t push him ‘cause he’s close to the edge

Mel Gibson is a good guy gone badass

Sarah Bungay

Edge of Darkness Starring Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Bojana Novakovic, Shawn Roberts, Denis O’Hare, and Jay O. Sanders 108 mins Rated 14A By Sarah Bungay When someone’s grieving, we usually feel a sense of sorrow and pity. This is the case for sympathetic character Thomas Craven (Gibson), a Boston homicide detective who witnesses the murder of his only...

A cameo by the Lucky Charms guy couldn’t redeem Leap Year

Ireland-set movie makes reviewer uncomfortable throughout

Zaren White

Leap Year Starring Amy Adams, Matthew Goode, and Adam Scott Universal 97 mins Rated PG With the frequency that digestible, passable romantic comedies are churned out and consumed, their formulaic construction is fairly obvious to the masses. We know what to expect, and while we don’t go in expecting to be born again or have our Earth shaken, we are...

The Coen brothers' dark comic take on the Book of Job

Autobiographical Yiddish childhood story marks another cinematic triumph

Mildred Pierce

You don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate the Coen Brothers’ latest masterpiece, and Mildred really believes this is a true masterpiece. Famously autobiographical, A Serious Man comes from a place that no writer could make up. They would have had to live it, and the Coen brothers undoubtedly did. The film is set in the 1960s and stars Michael...

Soccer heroes and hooligans score

MUN Cinema Series

Mildred Pierce

A lot of people are waiting to see this marvelous biopic called The Damned United. With the huge international appeal of football you’d think this film might have reached the mainstream theatres, but, once again, someone doesn’t know what he or she is doing. In any case, MUN Cinema wisely knows there is a hungry audience in town for this...