We Forgot to Break Up, a great Canadian indie, will make movie goers feel like they’re part of the film’s featured band. A fitting experience considering the leading musicians always feel part of their own collective; no matter how old they are, how inspired or bored they become, and despite feeling the strain of their own growing pains. Canadian filmmaker Karen Knox (Adult Adoption) chronicles the pinballing career of The New Normals, a fictitious trans-fronted…
Academy Award nominee May December and, now, Atom Egoyan’s Seven Veils are cut from the same cloth. Yet, I don’t know how to classify these types of heightened melodramas. These movies are not outright funny, but they have strange moments that are so deliberately jarring, the audience can’t help but giggle out of confusion. While this is a unique concoction, and can help the filmmaker achieve a specific brand of campiness, juxtaposing heavy themes within this…
Last Halloween, Netflix released a short spin-off of Sing featuring the animated cast taking part in a fairly faithful recreation of John Landis’ iconic music video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. It was an innocuous distraction, fit for the season, that introduced kids to zombies. Any kid who was interested, entertained, or joyfully spooked by that short film should make Night of the Zoopocalypse their next watch. It’s basically a longer version of that short film except, in this…
US army veteran Kyle Hausmann-Stokes makes his feature-length directorial debut with My Dead Friend Zoe, an admirable dramedy that features one of the best interpretations of PTSD. While serving in Afghanistan, Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green of TV’s The Walking Dead and Star Trek: Discovery) and Zoe (Natalie Morales of Netflix’s Dead to Me) naturally become friends. As roommates, they find themselves adjusting to a new lifestyle; especially since – as the title states – Zoe is dead and Merit is…
Morningside kicks off with a brilliant Steadicam shot introducing an ensemble of characters. The camerawork and direction has flare without gloating, and the actors – nearly all fresh faces – have genuine chemistry with each other. This sets a high watermark for Ron Dias’ Scarborough-set drama about a community centre facing an inevitable closure; while its residents prepare for holiday festivities and vent about the city’s gentrification. Unfortunately, Dias’ Morningside peaks early and this terrific…
Primarily coming from a background in television and documentary filmmaking, for his feature-length effort Last Breath, director/co-writer Alex Parkinson adapts one of his docs of the same name that chronicled this same story of a stranded and submerged saturation diver. During some underwater pipeline maintenance, a disruption leads to a snagged, and ultimately severed, oxygen supply for the diver. As his team works to save him, the diver tries to conserve the last of his…
The recent cinematic success of online gaming being represented competently freezes with Eat the Night, a very silly French drama from Jessica Forever filmmakers Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel. Siblings Apolline (Lila Gueneau) and Pablo (Théo Cholbi) have a shared interest in Darknoon, a World of Warcraft-inspired role-playing video game that has allowed Apolline to come out of her shell. Unfortunately for them, an in-game announcement conveys that Darknoon’s days are numbered and will be discontinued from its…
Parthenope (Celeste Dalla Porta) is an intelligent and challenging anthropology student who impresses her teachers and peers. When she’s not in class, the Naples native embraces life with her brother, Raimondo (Daniele Rienzo), and lifelong best friend Sandrino (Dario Aita). The men around Parthenope are infatuated with her, and the women admire her. Is there anything she can’t do? The answer: no – she can in fact do it all; such as take a break from…
Grand Theft Hamlet adds itself to a list of movies that were developed during the COVID-19 global lockdown but, also, stands out as one of the more unique examples that will represent this era of filmmaking. A portion of the population found themselves gravitating to video games during the lockdown, considering it was one of the only ways to stay connected with people. For instance, comedienne Sarah Silverman and writer/producer Rory Albanese built a romantic…
Earlier this month, director Jon M. Chu was awarded Best Director for his work on Wicked, the long-awaited stage-to-screen spin-off of The Wizard of Oz. The award came to a surprise for Chu, considering the production had been campaigned heavily for its performances and more cosmetic attributes. The award came to a surprise for me too. Though I like some of Chu’s earlier work, I felt that the filmmaker was out of his depth with…