HYDE PARK ON THE HUDSON
It may be difficult to get past seeing Hyde Park on Hudson as anything more than a cynical play at Oscar success, shadowing last year’s The King’s Speech with another tale of the stuttering King, this time set on Terra Americana. I think this kneejerk reaction would be unfair – love it or hate it, […]
The Master
You are going to look at me, and you’re not going to blink. I’m going to tell you a series of things about this film, and if you blink, I’ll have to start again. The Master is a hypnotic film. The Master is a hypnotic film. It’s hypnotic in that it repeats itself, repeating phrases and […]
Cloud Atlas
Bold, brash, epic, and silly, Cloud Atlas is the latest of a slew of big budget sci-fi epics that’s likely to find far more detractors than fans of its quirky style. Drawn from a popular book many considered to be “unfilmable,” the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer have crafted a visually compelling if cumulatively frustrating tale […]
WEST OF MEMPHIS
The documentary West of Memphis begins where it should, highlighting the initial victims that are at the heart of the entire tale: Three young boys who were hogtied, murdered and dumped into a creek in the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas. Three adolescents were arrested for the heinous crime based on a confession by […]
ANNA KARENINA
It’s probably best to admit up front that I’d never actually read Tolstoy’s tome about lust and infidelity in the Russian court. While I’ve made my way through much of the sullen Dostoyevsky, and maintain that dear Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was the finest writer of the 20th century, my knowledge of Russian authors, even those […]
MOONRISE KINGDOM eclipses high expectations
There are only a few directors in the history of cinema that have manged to craft, even from their earliest works, a consistent, signature style. Most fimmakers adjust in major ways project to project. Others seem content (some may claim are stuck) in a general aesthetic that shapes their works. These directors create worlds you […]
Brandon Cronenberg talks ANTIVIRAL
Antiviral marks the feature debut of the scion of one of the world’s most esteemed genre filmmakers. The film will be competing as part of the Un Certain Regard series, an immesely prestigious honor for this young filmmaker. Brandon Cronenberg’s name has actually appeared already on a film screened on the Croisette, appearing in the […]
AVENGERS? More like MEH-VENGERS…
OK, fanboys, let’s get a heap of things on the table, shall we? I’m the one that defends Phantom Menace, John Carter, and even War Horse, kinda, but thought Hunger Games was a disaster. I liked Cabin in the Woods a whole lot, but have never suckled at Whedon’s teets. I liked Thor and Iron […]
HOTDOCS 2012 Review – THE FINAL MEMBER Pairs w/ MANHOOD for Mighty Eve of Penises
In one of the finer examples of the synergy caused by pairing two separate films together, the programming staff at Hotdocs made a wise move of presenting an evening of all things phallus. Manhood is a short doc from some students at the local Humber College. It’s a harrowing tale of a young, cocky cocksman […]
HotDocs 2012 Review: CHARLES BRADLEY: SOUL OF AMERICA
The film starts with a 62 year-old man wearing a flowing cape and instantly recognizable wig, donning the disguise of a soul legend before taking the stage. He slinks into the dark Brooklyn divebar, ostensibly there to both celebrate a birthday and perform in concert. The man who goes by the stage name “Black Velvet” […]
HotDocs 2012 Review: BEWARE OF MR. BAKER, As Drummer Still Packs a Wallop
If all Ginger Baker ever did musically was to beat the drums behind Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton during the heady two year sprint that was Cream, then Ginger Baker’s role as rock-god may well have been solidified. If all this documentary had was that same Ginger Baker beating the shit out of the director […]
HotDocs 2012 Review: THE IMPOSTER May Be the RASHOMON of (Post)Modern Docs
Everyone lies. It’s a simple statement, but few take it to heart. Now, of course, I’m not lying, I’m telling you my story, my response to this film. But I may be lying to myself, and then to you, convincing myself I loved this film more than I really did just to stand out from […]
FROZEN PLANET Blu-Ray Review
This review also appears on TWITCHfilm.com The arrival of any Attenborough narrated, epic BBC Natural History unit documentary is cause for celebration. The small elements are like Pavlovian cues for any fan of these films, leaving us drooling over the sans-serif font (Helvetica Narrow? Century Schoolbook Gothic?), the massive panorama shots, the endless pullback zooms, […]
SOUND IT OUT, the “official” film of Record Store Day
Of all the silly, arbitrary, greeting-cardy, ridiculous holidays (I’m looking at you, Simchas Torah!), the one I can get behind unreservedly is “Record Store Day”. I think that the celebration of your local record establishment, complete with exclusive and often beautifully esoteric releases, is a fine thing worth of celebration. As we march inevitably into […]
Take a Journey TO THE ARCTIC in IMAX-shot Polar Bear Film
If you look at the past credits of nature film director Greg MacGillivray, you’ll see oodles of super pretty documentaries, often with epic shots filmed from ‘copters buzzing a particular landscape. Of late, he’s crafted a number of those IMAX films that get shown to school kids at your local science center. One of the […]
CHIMPANZEE, From Disney and BBC’s Natural History Unit
Unless you’ve been living under one of the rocks that they photograph so beautifully, you’ll know that the BBC’s nature photography unit has been at the forefront of capturing some of the most stunning images of our planet and its inhabitants for decades now. Usually narrated by the stalwart, infectiously curious David Attenborough, series such […]
WE BOUGHT A ZOO Blu-Ray Review
“It sounds like it’s the worst movie when you pitch it. I usually, say ‘It’s about a family that buys a zoo!’, and just when their eyes begin to glaze over, I say, ‘well, it’s a Cameron Crowe movie!’” – Matt Damon There are films, the recent release of Chinatown is brought immediate to mind, […]
THE MUPPETS Blu-Ray Review
The back story goes something like this – in 2008, Jason Segel finds commercial success with a quirky comedy he wrote and starred in called Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The surprise hit offers the opportunity for Segel (who has now joined up with FSM’s director Nicholas Stoller) to a pitch meeting at the “House the Mouse […]
TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY – BLU RAY REVIEW
The Film Growing up on a slew of Bond flicks, and reading the Bourne books at a relatively young age, my introduction to the world of the British spy trope was one of car chases, kinetic action and exotic locales. The tone presented in this film, clearly derived from the John le Carré’s source, seems […]
Oy Canada: GOON And The Apotheosis Of Jewish Wish Fulfillment
In one of the many classic scenes from the 1980 film, an old lady asks the stewardess aboard her AIRPLANE for something “light” to read. She’s in turn handed a “leaflet” entitled “JEWISH SPORTS LEGENDS“. Cue audience laughter. It’s long been a running joke, especially in Hollywood where the studios did much in their first […]
A MAN ESCAPED: Bresson Retrospective at the Bell Lightbox
It should come as no surprise that even for the most stalwart of cinephiles there are always enormous holes in their film education. Sure, I may have seen both CRANK films, the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA film and a large portion of the works of Baz Lurhman, but before this latest round of Lightbox’s cinemateque retrospective, I’d […]
CHRONICLE
This January, a month traditionally reserved as a dumping ground for movies that neither fit in the mold for Awards season, nor are mainstream enough to be considered Summer blockbuster fare, have seen a few surprises show up. CHRONICLE joins the likes of WOMAN IN BLACK and THE GREY as a slightly offbeat, literate genre […]
THE INKEEPERS
What’s most frustrating about THE INKEEPERS is that it’s far less clever than the film tries desperately to be. With Ti West’s script (and direction, and editing, and production) we get a passable genre piece with illusions of grandeur. Mixing the matter-of-fact dialogue of PULP FICTION with a spookified hotel channeling every film that came […]
RED TAILS
Let me state at the outset that RED TAILS will be seen as both a commercial and critical failure. It’s hard to see, despite the mass marketing blitz, how this film about the famed Tuskeegee airmen, the first black fighting air squadron in the US military, will manage even in this slow season to reap […]
IRON LADY
There are few political figures as polarizing at Margaret Thatcher, leader of great Britain through a tumultuous decade that followed a sharp, shocking decline in the UKs economic and social fortunes. Any film that tackles her story is bound to be met with a great deal of skepticism, fearing either hatchet piece or hagiography. Gratefully, […]
CARNAGE
Taking what first appears to be a left turn from his usual comfort zone (dry comedy usually doesn’t come first to mind), Roman Polanski brings us CARNAGE. It’s a dark, droll work, one based on a play originally written in French, playing (in translated form) for hundreds of performances on Broadway. I’m the first to […]
ROMAN POLANSKI RETROSPECTIVE AT BELL LIGHTBOX
Following up on their recent success with the Lars Von Trier retrospective, TIFF Lightbox provides a similar overview of the career of another provocative and controversial filmmaker, Roman Polanski. Like Von Trier, it’s often difficult for many to separate the art from the life of the man, and few have lived a more colourful and […]
Packaged Goods – Year’s Best
Once upon a time, way before there were the interwebs as we know them to be, there were a series of clipshows that’d play local arthouses. I remember sitting through 90 minutes of weird Japanese hottub-farting commercials, or clips of Scandavians learning English through the filthy lyrics of hardcore music on the radio. These were […]
SHAME
Way back in 2008, I described director Steve McQueen’s HUNGER, starring Michael Fassbender, as “a study in meditation and ambivalence”. With this, his second film and second collaboration with the fantastically talented actor, McQueen turns his lens to a far more prosaic topic – loveless fucking. Not since Cronenberg’s 1996 film CRASH, also a film […]
Lars von Trier: Waiting for the End of the World
Back in the spring of 1996 I had the opportunity to attend the Cannes Film Festival. The whole week was a whirlwind, my first real fest experience that involved a lack of sleep, running from screening to screening and seeing some of the best (and worst!) films that I’d ever experienced. ’96 was the year […]