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 [...]
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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 [...]
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HOTDOCS 2012 Review – THE FINAL MEMBER Pairs w/ MANHOOD for Mighty Eve of Penises
Directed By: Jonah Bekhor & Zach Math
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 [...]
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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” [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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CHIMPANZEE, From Disney and BBC’s Natural History Unit
Directed By: Alastair Fothergill & Mark Linfield
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 [...]
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Excerpt from the full essay found at TWITCHFILM.com GOON adroitly plays on many of our nationalistic and cultural predilections to craft a pretty fun little film. On one level it’s just a silly hockey movie, speaking to those craving scenes of brutality on ice. But on another, deeper level, it serves as a kind of [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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, [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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There’s a scene early on in INNI where the members of Sigur Rós sit down to an interview at NPR. Asked if their music started out as something more conventional before it became experimental, the four of them stare at the off screen host, dumfounded. Describing their music is a fool’s errand, one even the [...]
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With THE LAST WALTZ, Martin Scorsese assembled some of the finest cinematographers in history and captured the epic last concert of The Band. He interspersed concert footage with behind-the-scenes interviews, crafting one of the finest documentations of that period of music. With SHINE A LIGHT, he brought 70mm IMAX production to a contemporary Rolling Stones [...]
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It all seemed so promising – a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese revolution that overthrew centuries of dynastic rule, coupled with the 100th film credited to international superstar Jackie Chan, and granted a budget that could see such a story being brought to the screen with sufficient pomp and scope. Why, then, [...]
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I was asked on the twitter today about what Criterion Blu-Ray a friend should buy. This got me thinking as to what are my favourite discs in the collection, which disc on DVD-only are must haves (or deserving of upgrade), and which discs that they formally had licensed in their Laserdisc days deserve to be [...]
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THE INTERRUPTERS is a poignant, engaging look at a group of Chicagoans looking to curb the violence plaguing their city. Tracing a year in the life of this group, the film details with stark clarity the lives of a community beset by ongoing cycles of retribution. We follow a group of “Interrupters”, former gang members [...]
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By almost any measure, this film should be terrible. Nothing much happens for an hour, then a bunch of guys get in a truck to make a delivery. Finally (spoiler), things go badly. And yet, almost despite itself, THE WAGES OF FEAR is one of the most tense, most accomplished thrillers ever put to film. [...]
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Growing up with THE MUPPET SHOW, the musical and comic stylings of Paul Williams were inescapable. I assume I saw him on the plethora of game shows and LOVE BOAT appearances he made, but it was this little mans turn with Kermit and friends, and his subsequent scoring of the first MUPPET MOVIE that ingrained [...]
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All the ingredients are there – a fascinating tale of a boy-King crowned in the midst of the last World War, forced to flee his country and live in exile, only to triumphantly return after the collapse of the Soviet Union to claim a democratically elected leadership position decades after he first held office. Unfortunately, [...]
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In this extremely well made documentary, Alex Gibney (here last year with the under-appreciated CLIENT 9) sets his sights on one of the more misunderstood characters of Canada’s game – the hockey enforcer. The film starts with a startling shot of a pair of ravaged hands, the kunckles obliterated, fingers skewed at odd angles. The [...]
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Leave it to Herzog to turn the debate about capital punishment on its head. Delving into the events of a brutal Texan homicide, he talks to the two men convicted of the crime, the families of the victims, and the law enforcement and legal personnel that arrested, convicted, and eventually put to death one of [...]
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