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Movie Review: The Longest Ride

Photo Source: EW

Photo Source: EW

Recognizing that I’m a Nicholas Sparks fan, I was excited to receive passes to an advance screening of The Longest Ride, which is based on his novel. The movie’s luscious rural North Carolina setting looks nothing like Toronto, so it was nice to escape and be swept away by the romantic script.

Sophia (Britt Robertson) is a college senior eager to finish school and start building a career in New York’s art scene. When her sorority sisters drags her to a rodeo, she meets Luke (Scott Eastwood) and starts dating the bull rider. Meanwhile, their love story is intertwined with another, which dates back to the 1940s.

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April 10, 2015 by

Movie Review: Fed Up

Make room for another documentary about the obesity epidemic. In Fed Up, narrator Katie Couric walks viewers through history to explain why so many Americans are overweight.

In addition to featuring numerous interviews with professors, politicians and doctors, Fed Up chronicles the lifestyles of a few students. The students provide testimonials in between clips of them at home, school and doctor appointments.

In 1977, when a government report was released encouraging the food industry to manufacture food with less fat, food manufacturers responded by decreasing calories and increasing sugar. I like one doctor’s approach to explaining how consuming sugar affects our metabolism. “You can eat a bowl of Corn Flakes with no added sugar or you can eat a bowl of sugar with added Corn Flakes,” he says. “They might taste different, but below the neck, they’re metabolically the same.”

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February 25, 2015 by

Movie Review: Still Alice

Still Alice tells the story of a talented Columbia professor who’s married with three kids and diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Alice (Julianne Moore) plays Words with Friends regularly, but can’t remember the right words to say during lectures.

Her supervisor refuses to pretend that everything’s normal when students start writing less than favourable reviews of her classes. In a performance review, Alice feels obliged to confess that she has a medical condition. Despite urging her supervisor to let her continue teaching, she must give up her teaching gig long before she anticipated retiring.

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February 18, 2015 by

Movie Review: Obvious Child

Hot On The Street - Obvious Child - Jenny Slate Coffee

There’s nothing like getting an abortion on Valentine’s Day. Or finding out that you’re unemployed. Or becoming pregnant from a one night stand. It officially sucks to be Donna Stern.

Donna (Jenny Slate) has worked in an independent bookstore for over five years, but she’s anything but nerdy. She wears lots of cardigans, but she’s hardly meek. She’s just an average 28-year-old Jewish comedian living paycheque to paycheque in Brooklyn. She would rather drink with friends than worry about her future—in a totally non-alcoholic way.

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August 7, 2014 by

Movie Review: Begin Again

BEGIN AGAIN

Begin Again might be about relationships, but it’s hardly a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy. Rather, it’s a splendid love letter to New York that made me wish my last trip to NYC was longer.

After Dan (Mark Ruffalo) makes a fool of himself in a big meeting, he deals with his misery at a dive bar, where he hears Gretta (Keira Knightley) singing on stage. Gretta planned to pack her bags and return to England once she learned of her boyfriend’s infidelity, but Dan convinces her to stay and record an album with him. The film then follows Dan and Gretta around New York as they make an album on a shoestring budget.

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July 24, 2014 by