Movie Review

Film: Creature
Director: Fred M. Andrews
Cast: Mehcad Brooks, Serinda Swan, Dillon Casey, Lauren Schneider, Aaron Hill, Amanda Fuller, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Daniel Bernhardt, Sid Haig
Studio: The Bubble Factory
Genre: Horror
Release Date: Friday September 9, 2011
Rated: R



Reviewed By Adam A. Donaldson

The surprise with the new monster feature Creature has nothing to do with the twists and turns of the story about six young people that go site-seeing in the bayou for a legendary alligator man. It’s that you kind of like them and hope they survive. Which is impossible, I know, but still, one can hope. And yes, that does turn out to be a false hope.

Creature begins like half the horror movies ever made by showing a happy-go-lucky group of hot, nubile twenty-something campers on their way, in this case to New Orleans, for some general debauchery. Also in typical fashion, they stop at a store in the middle of nowhere and razz the local hicks about their love for the legend of Lockjaw, a kind of Bigfoot with a crocodile head whose story involves incest, grief, man-on-nature revenge and finally, cannibalism. By the time the kids gets out to Lockjaw’s infamous cabin in the exact centre of dense of swampland, you can already see where this is going.

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Movie Review

Griff the Invisible

Director: Leon Ford

Stars: Ryan Kwanten, Maeve Dermody and Marshall Napier

Studio: Indomina Releasing

Genre: Comedy/Drama

Rated: PG

Reviewed By Adam A. Donaldson

The notion of a singly-determined man to done a costume and become a superhero is not new, especially in the last couple of years. On the high-profile side there was Matthew Vaughan’s Kick-Ass, about a bullied teen that finds his chutzpah in a scuba suit, and on the low-profile side is James Gunn’s grossly hilarious Super about a man sent over a mental cliff after his wife leaves him. Now, offering a different tone is Griff the Invisible, which, like Super, originally bowed at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

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Movie Review

Red State

Director: Kevin Smith

Stars: Michael Parks, Melissa Leo, Kyle Gallner, Nicholas Braun and John Goodman

Studio: Phase 4 Films

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Rated: R

Reviewed By Adam A. Donaldson

Red State doesn’t look like a Kevin Smith movie, and of course I don’t mean that in a condescending, “I can’t believe HE directed this” kind of way, but rather a wow, “you’ve come a long way, baby” frame of mind.

With a few notable exceptions, Smith’s career and filmmaking oeuvre has been mainly directed towards arrested development (not the show) style humour about young men getting in situations both implausible and obscene while trading up-to-the-minute pop culture quips. Don’t get me wrong here, it’s suited the director well over the years, and has shown himself as a man that definitely knows his audience. To put this in terms of career optics, this is like when Steven Spielberg took on The Colour Purple and Empire of the Sun after establishing himself as the predominant popcorn dream weaver of his generation. In other words, a great leap forward as an artist.

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Cross Colours, ghetto blasters, mix tapes and In Living Color. Ah, the 90s!

FILM REVIEW

Title: Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest

Director: Michael Rapaport

Studio/Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Principle Cast: Q-Tip (Kamaal Fareed), Phife Dawg (Malik Taylor) Ali Muhammad, Jarobi White 

Running Time: 95 min  

Release Date: July 29th in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal

Reviewed by Chaka V. (Toronto)

When A Tribe Called Quest lyrically came onto the scene in 1990 with their first album, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, they transformed hip-hop forever. Pioneering an Afro-conscious, jazz infused, hip hop sound, their genius, exuberance, and innovative spirit crossed racial and socioeconomic boundaries, catapulting them into cross over fame during the golden age of hip hop. But after making just 5 albums, 3 of which were highly acclaimed, the band parted ways amidst simmering resentment and accusations following 1998’s The Love Movement.

In the documentary, Beats Rhymes & Life: the Travels of a Tribe Called Quest, actor/director Michael Rapaport takes ATCQ fans and avid music lovers back in the day when ATCQ reigned. Spanning from their 2008 Rock the Bells reunion, Beats chronicles the music icons into 2010, where the question of whether or not they will reunite remains unsolved.

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