November 2019
Varda By Agnès
I’m a late arrival to Agnès Varda’s career and, considering she passed away earlier this year, I thought I was too late to start appreciating her filmmaking. But what her final film Varda By Agnès has taught me is that it’s never too late to share or be inspired. And because the film has been made with compassion and love, it never feels like a pretentious exercise.
Knives Out
By: Jolie Featherstone Director Rian Johnson (Looper, Star Wars: Episode XIII – The Last Jedi) makes a triumphant return to his whodunnit-loving form with Knives Out. Fourteen years after his much-loved debut feature, Brick, a passionately-told film noir set in a modern-day Southern California high school, Johnson’s Knives Out charmed audiences with one of the most talked-about films at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
Marriage Story
By: Jessica Goddard At the Marriage Story screening I attended, a complimentary packet of tissues was waiting in the cup holder of each seat in the theatre. Quite the statement. So when the movie opens with both leading characters reading the lists of things they like about one another in front of a mediator, you know this will be a wrenching watch.
The Divine Fury
Fans of Keanu Reeves may want to tune into The Divine Fury. After all, this South Korean horror-thriller feels inspired by John Wick’s fight choreography and Constantine’s freaky gothic imagery.
Trixie Mattel: Moving Parts
My recommendation of Trixie Mattel: Moving Parts comes with a bit of a bias.
Margaret Atwood: A Word after a Word after a Word is Power
By: Jessica Goddard Margaret Atwood is fairly low-hanging fruit as far as documentary subjects go. At the moment, it’s almost certain she’s Canada’s most recognized, beloved author, and her latest novel, The Testaments, came out in September and is a sequel to her best-known work, The Handmaid’s Tale.
Midway
By: Jessica Goddard Full disclosure: I am bad at watching war movies. I watch war movies out of some (likely misdirected) sense of duty – if actual human beings lived these horrors, I should be able to stomach cinematic recreations of them, is my thinking. But, I find it very hard to watch people die (which I’ve chosen to attribute to a smug overabundance of empathy) even if it’s only a performance. For this reason,…