Youth In Revolt
June 3, 2010
In Youth In Revolt, Michael Cera takes a huge risk by playing against type as… an awkward teenager who can’t get laid. Based on the popular 1993 novel, the story centres around Nick Twisp, a goodie-two-shoes dork who develops an evil alter-ego in order to woo the one he loves with mischief and misdemeanors.
Youth In Revolt is a very funny film. Cera thrives as Francois Dillinger, Nick’s asshole alter-ego, and the film is at its best when that character is on-screen. The plot however, which shows promise initially, slowly falls apart as the film winds down and director Miguel Arteta’s decision to incorporate several animated cut-scenes only serves to distract viewer’s from the underwritten narrative (although they do look pretty cool.)
Repo Men
March 31, 2010
Imagine a world where cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and many other life-threatening maladies could all be erased…for a fee.
Repo Men is set in a future Toronto, where modern medicine has developed mechanical organs that can seamlessly replace their flesh counterparts, ensuring sick people can continue to live healthy, happy lives. All it takes is the signing of a contract, and a payment plan that ’suits your lifestyle needs’.
Sounds good…unless you can’t make a payment, and that’s when the ‘repo men’ (played brilliantly by Jude Law and Forrest Whittaker) step in, to repossess your newly acquired heart, lung, spleen etc., by any means necessary.
It’s a scary, and potentially real concept, that makes for a thought-provoking distopian picture, all while also being a gritty, bloody action flick, where cyborgs run for their lives from trained assassins. It’s all very fascinating until the movie takes a predictable turn halfway through and devolves into a standard shoot-em-up action flick, that at time borders on absurdity (see the self-mutilating, elbows-deep-in chest-cavities sex scene). However, a final plot twist at the film’s conclusion give the stylistic change some meaning and all feels right.
Hot Tub Time Machine
March 31, 2010
One of the most ridiculous movie concepts ever conceived of, Hot Tub Time Machine, is well aware of it, and uses that suspension of disbelief to deliver a highly amusing, albeit silly-as-hell comedy.
Perfectly cast, particularly John Cusack who’s spoofing the same films that made him famous, the characters (or caricatures) are spot-on, the jokes hit more than miss, and despite a thread-bare plot, the action never gets too dull.
You don’t need to have lived in the 80s to enjoy it, but if you did, there are plenty of in-jokes to get you feeling nostalgic. Look for side-splitting cameos from 80s standouts, Chevy Chase and Crispin Glover.
- Sam Stilson
Most Hardbossin’ Films of 2009
March 7, 2010
When compiling a list of the best anything of a year, a little distance goes a long way. Taking a few months to catch up on the gems you missed and rewatching your favourites from a 12-month period tends to paint a much clearer picture, allowing the cream of the crop to rise to the top. So taking a cue from the Academy Awards, Hardboss is presenting our ‘Best Films of 2009′ a few months into 2010. Culled from a list of over 60 films, these motion pictures truly showed themselves to be worthy of praise and perhaps a little golden man come Mar. 7th.
* * *
The Hurt Locker Review
July 19, 2009
The Hurt Locker follows a three-person U.S. Army unit that defuses improvised explosive devices. Though it’s set in Baghdad, I can’t imagine a more prescient account of what’s going on in Afghanistan as well (just recently the New York Times ran a photo of a huge roadside explosion). Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, from a script by Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker has the potential to make heroes out of the real soldiers that do this unglamorous but (evidently) essential work.
Because the work itself rarely engages broader feuds and politics in Baghdad, and focuses on the pressing problem of weapons that indiscriminately kill, the unit (convincingly played by Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty) has a quasi-humanitarian role though they think of themselves as warriors. The dialogue contains at least a couple of glib references to how reflexive their role is in this conflict and that their presence is the cause of the insurgency to which they’re reacting. [Read more]
Toronto Fringe Festival 2009
July 7, 2009
Who doesn’t love a good play?
Hardboss Magazine certainly does.
With the 20th edition of the Toronto Fringe Festival now up and running , we are trying to satiate our love of good drama by attending a few of the best plays being put on around the city.
Check below for play reviews including showtimes and admission prices:
Ever by Jonathon Hoss
The Laramie Project by Moisiés Kaufman [Read more]
Toronto’s Best Dingy Underground Cinemas
December 4, 2008
I love going to the flicks, but the thought of negotiating the crowds, the stale popcorn and even staler programming of a multiplex often makes the couch look mighty good. Fortunately Torontonians are a movie mad bunch, and there are a sway of homier, grungier celluloid gin joints around offering to upsize my popcorn-and-Coke experience.
Here are some of the best:
Bloor Cinema - 506 Bloor St W (east of Bathurst)
Often voted Toronto’s favourite repertory cinema, the century-old Bloor is a grand old dame with over 800 seats, a two tiered balcony and an enormous screen. Showcasing an impressively diverse range of programs and film festivals, Bloor Cinema is a must for any self respecting cinephile. Cheap membership and admission means you’ll have change for Scooby snacks or a post celluloid brew at one of the many nearby watering holes.
Role Models Review
November 7, 2008
Over the last few years, the American comedy has had a bit of a comeback thanks to director Judd Apatow and his slew of hilarious films. Taking a page out of his book, Paul Rudd, frequent Apatow actor, both wrote and co-stars in Role Models alongside the affable Seann William Scott.
Role Models is based around the lives of Danny (Rudd) and Wheeler (Scott) two less-than noble guys whose job is to trick school kids into saying no to drugs, and yes to the Minotaur energy drink they shill on the side. After a surprise ten-year anniversary party for Danny’s career in the shyster business, he goes off the handle and proposes to his girlfriend (who immediately rejects him), tells a group of school kids that drugs are in fact “cool”, and then proceeds to drive the company’s bull-shaped truck into a horse-shaped statue.
Tokyo Gore Police
November 3, 2008
I couldn’t help but get excited when sitting in the audience waiting to see Tokyo Gore Police. With an energized buzz around me and 100 people in the rush lines this was proving to be the most popular film at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. My interest was piqued even further when I heard that the director, Yoshihiro Nishimura, had called in favours for the film from many of the people he has worked with as a makeup effects artist, including Takashi Shimizu who makes a gruesome cameo.
Tokyo Gore Police does not disappoint. It promises gore and it certainly delivers. However, as well as being a great blood and guts flick, the film is also a dark, stylized satire, that shines a floodlight onto society’s obsession with revenge, and the link drawn so often between violence and sex.
Mutant Chronicles
November 3, 2008
Mutant Chronicles, based on a series of fantasy card games, opens with an epic voiceover explaining that in the distant future, four corporations rule the earth, though they are perpetually at war. The film then transports the audience to what appears to be the 1940’s and we are supposed to believe that roughly 10,000 years in the future the best form of combat is trench warfare, and women have given up pants for tweed skirts and pin curls.
What follows is the most gruelingly dull introduction captured on film, by way of a battle scene in which the seal to hell is blasted open and mutants begin dragging people down into the depths of the Earth to feed them to a machine that makes more mutants. Brilliant…