Victor Kanefsky’s Art Bastard asks broad questions about the relationship between art and politics. Its subject, American artist Robert Cenedella, serves a micro-answer to some of these broad questions. Although Kanefsky is successful in arguing for Cenedella’s work as critical satirical representations of U.S. political culture, the film lacks energy.
Christine Chubbuck was a woman who managed to do what no one else could – shock America. In 1974, in the midst of countless political assassinations, mass murders and serial killings, it would take a truly jarring event to shake the American public, which turned out to be a suicide on live television; “the latest in blood and guts, in living colour”. Chubbuck’s suicide has been an object of morbid curiosity since and it has…
Now, this is more like it! Let Her Out is the type of movie I want to see from Canadian filmmaker Cody Calahan.
Alexander Skarsgård (The Legend of Tarzan) and Michael Peña (Ant-Man) are two of New Mexico’s worst cops, yet they’re the kings of their castle in War on Everyone. Their delusion intimidates pedestrians and perps, and their shallowness makes their supervisor Lt. Gerry Stanton (Paul Reiser) confused and ultimately indifferent. However, their false royalty is disrupted when they’re overshadowed by a more diabolical threat, Lord James Mangan (Theo James of The Benefactor and the Divergent series).
Do you hate The X-Files, but feel like watching a maudlin addict and a rational redhead embark on a federal investigation as they solve a mysterious murder in a small American town? Miles Doleac’s The Hollow might be for you!
Sometimes, it becomes difficult to separate an artist’s work from their personality; sometimes, this is because the artist has done something horrible and unforgivable. Director, writer and leading actor Nate Parker is one of those people: this is not the space to get into his actions, but I would recommend all uninformed readers to do their research before deciding if they wish to give him their money. With that out of the way, it became…
Sometimes all talk and no action can be for the best. Such is the case with Denial, the star-studded British/American drama based on historian Deborah E. Lipstadt’s memoir History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier (2005) that recounts her experiences with the British legal system following a libel suit that was raised against her and the publishers of her first book, Denying the Holocaust (1993), by David Irving.
The Toronto After Dark Film Festival is one week away, but programmer Justin McConnell wants a head start in frightening you.
After a string of disheartening rom-coms, I really thought Better Off Single was going to cheer me up. It had a few good laughs out of the gate, and it was neat to see what Aaron Tveit could do with a sadsack role after wowing audiences in FOX’s Grease LIVE! as T-Bird Danny Zuko. Unfortunately, writer/director Benjamin Cox provides an excitable energy that becomes the film’s worst enemy.
Though magic realism isn’t anything new in cinema, there are few original scripts that get the genre right as deftly as Two Lovers and a Bear, the indie romance/drama that premiered earlier this year at the Toronto International Film Festival.