The Tribune

This summer’s reality shows lacked complexity, and tended to favour one overblown storyline over a more cohesive selection. Jersey Shore’s Miami revamp is no exception. The silly idea-turned-cultural-phenomenon has primarily focused on the on-again/off-again relationship between last season’s only serious couple: Ronnie and Sammi.

This is one of those movies throughout which you chuckle a bunch of times, have a few hearty glances at the person sitting next to you, and basically enjoy thoroughly. But I won’t give it much more than that. It’s a Toronto-based hipster extravaganza about girls who dye their hair, listen to cool bands, and have vegan ex-boyfriends, and guys who barely straddle the line between endearingly awkward and terribly inept.

Dinner for Schmucks seemingly has a lot going for it: a funny premise (based on the French film Le Dîner de cons) and a big-name comedic cast. It turns out that sometimes the sum can be less than its parts. For one thing, most of the movie takes place before the actual “dinner for idiots” where financial executive Tim (Paul Rudd) has to debut successfully in order to finalize a promotion.

Despicable Me was touted as Universal’s answer to Pixar’s steady stream of successful, adorable, and quirky animated films including Up, Ratatouille, and The Incredibles. While the style of Despicable Me may resemble that of Pixar, and the characters are of the same eccentric variety, Despicable Me offers a new and interesting story for children and adults with a villain whose sole desire in life is to make others as miserable as he is.

The Festival du Nouveau Cinema is the oldest of its kind in Montreal, celebrating its 35th birthday this October. The festival opens tomorrow with Philippe Falardeau’s Congorama and closes Oct. 26 with a spotlight on the Spanish cinema screening of Pedro Almodovar’s Volver.

Dear Journal, what can I say? He drove a cool car, remarks a certain 13-year-old boy by the name of Augusten Burroughs in the new movie adaptation of the memoir Running With Scissors. Having read Burroughs’ reminiscences of a homosexual boy with a 35-year-old boyfriend growing up in western Massachusetts in the late 70s, I was readily expecting golden phrases such as the former in the film’s adaptation.

Audiences have been eagerly awaiting Sofia Coppola’s new film since her last offering, the critically acclaimed Lost in Translation debuted. Unexpectedly, Coppola brings us from the neon lights of the streets of Tokyo to the glittering hallways of Versailles.

All things considered, Martin Scorsese hasn’t made a decent feature film in over a decade. Gangs of New York seemed excessively brutal and utterly pointless, Bringing out the Dead sank like a stone and The Aviator, for all the accolades draped over it, hardly served its biographical purposes adequately and was a remarkably boring film.

Tuesday evening saw the debut of CBC’s latest prime time original broadcast, the brainchild of Chris Haddock, nationally revered creator of decade-spanning Canadian success Da Vinci’s Inquest. His new series, Intelligence, examines a new facet of West Coast criminality, this time turning the camera towards the perpetrators rather than the victims and investigators.

The newest and most highly anticipated show from NBC’s fall lineup premiered Monday night. Heroes enacts everybody’s dream fantasy – to wake up in the morning and discover an amazing superpower. Along the lines of a televised X-Men, the show follows nine characters around the globe who find themselves in just that situation.