By: Trevor Chartrand Director Wes Anderson is at it again with another quirky stop-motion animated feature, his second foray into the genre since 2009’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox. In Isle of Dogs, Anderson’s gone above and beyond to create a clever, stylized, and memorable motion picture.
Last year’s Kedi, one of the best films of the year, showed us just how much potential there is in cat documentaries. This year, CBC Docs attempted to follow that nascent tradition in Canada with Catwalk: Tales from the Catshow Circuit, a study of people and their pets who participate in such performances. And, yes, there’s a healthy dose of cute cat action.
Certain topics pertaining to sex and intimacy aren’t really taboo anymore. We’ve had an influx of orgy comedies (A Good Old Fashioned Orgy, How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town), and filmmakers have also captured stripped-down dating culture in the current digital age (Jackie Boy, as well as with glossier mainstream movies). Because of these advancements in storytelling, Jon E. Cohen’s underwhelming feature film debut A Swingers Weekend feels a few years too late.
By: Jessica Goddard Paolo Virzì’s geriatric road trip flick wastes the legendary talents of Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren on some of the most unfortunate forced sentimentality and rushed melodrama I’ve seen in years. Despite a promising premise, this adaption of Michael Zadoorian’s novel of the same name is more often cringeworthy than sincere.
Nelly, a gung-ho private detective, and Simon, an aspiring anthropologist, make an unlikely heroic pair in Nelly & Simon: Mission Yeti, a colourful French-Canadian action/adventure yarn from directors Nancy Florence Savard and Pierre Greco.
Supa Modo hit an emotional sweet spot with me, as I’m sure it will with TIFF Kids audiences. It’s easy to engage with a film that has this much optimism and zest.
Across the past couple decades, Armando Iannucci has repeatedly shown himself to be one of the most important voices working in comedy. Whether we are discussing his hand in the creation of Alan Partridge or his blatantly political work in The Thick of It and Veep, Iannucci has shown that he has his hand on the comedic pulse of whatever age he may be in. Now, he’s decided to take on a new experiment: a…
One thing that tends to endear viewers to a film is something that has been described as a “personal” style of filmmaking. When the director finds something that they have a deep personal connection with and they present it to us in an authentic, unpretentious way, that is usually something to be commended. Unfortunately, it is also possible to become too personal, giving up certain aesthetic qualities in favour of familiarity. When that happens, the…
