The most interesting thing about Lucky is the director’s connection to the concept. This is the directorial debut of John Carroll Lynch, a character actor who sometimes has the capability to steal a whole movie with his few scenes. Even if you can’t recall Lynch from his name, the moment you see him appear in films (like Shutter Island and Zodiac), you can’t help but be excited to see what he does with his supporting…
By: Jessica Goddard The writing instructor continuously trying to put down his most gifted student in hopes of making him better and stronger. A father who doesn’t want to indulge his son’s delusions of a career as a professional writer. The sight of a Capital A “artist” bent over his typewriter in an otherwise empty, white room. These are just a few of the many contrivances the viewer of Rebel in the Rye is subjected…
Writer/director Pat Mills follows up his 2015 comedy Guidance with the equally hilarious Don’t Talk to Irene. However, his latest flick is certainly cut from a quirkier cloth, but that doesn’t make it any less sarcastic. It’s certainly one of the funniest films of the year.
People will connect with Maureen Judge’s award-winning doc My Millennial Life, but I also worry that it may be redundant.
There’s an art project titled White Night. It’s a collaborative between five filmmakers (Sonny Atkins, P.H. Bergeron, Brian Hamilton, Matt Purdy, Dan Slater) and it chronicles six fictitious stories during Toronto’s Nuit Blanche – an all-nighter dedicated to art. One of the characters, a struggling artist named Emily, contributes a cumbersome piece made entirely out of stacked cardboard boxes. People pass by and heckle at it, while Emily fumes and eventually releases the tension through a…
Our Souls at Night is what I would call an “easy recommendation”. It has a satisfying modesty that makes the viewer feel nice. It’s also a safe suggestion for fellow movie goers within the same social circles. However, it isn’t a “necessary recommendation” because that would require the film to carry more weight than expected while also pleasing the audience.
A documentary about The Tragically Hip’s Man Machine Poem Tour needed to be made. After all, it was a pivotal imprint in modern Canadian culture as the entire nation collectively considered the band’s timeless legacy and paid respects to terminally ill musician Gord Downie. Finding filmmakers to handle such sensitive subject matter would be an intimidating order, yet Jennifer Baichwal (Watermark) and Nicholas de Pencier (cinematographer on The Ghosts in Our Machine) rise to the occasion and exceed…
Beach Rats is a good coming-of-age movie from a gay perspective, but its middle portions are the most compelling. It’s bookended by familiar emotions and the finish line is the type of gut-wrenching finale audiences expect from a sombre story like this one, but writer/director Eliza Hittman takes an interesting route to get there.
Bachelor parties in movies never go well, do they? They seem to follow a three-step formula: they start with kernels of giddy excitement, then bubble over into insanity, resulting in hapless characters having to deal with the consequences. Such is the case for the new “bro comedy” Big Bear.
At the moment, there isn’t a more indulgent director than Frank D’Angelo. The Canadian entrapreneur/musician has made a film career out of mob movies featuring (and recycling) loaded casts, essentially, playing cops n’ robbers. The material is more than criminals and anti-heroes pointing guns and using twelve-letter words to berate each other, but some have argued otherwise. The Neighborhood, unfortunately, gives the haters ammunition.