Latest

2020

Reviews

Eternal Beauty

Eternal Beauty is ostensibly the second film to be released in recent months in which a character diagnosed with schizophrenia struggles with the broad issues of love, family, and life.  Unlike Luke Eve’s heavily saccharine I Met a Girl, where a man with schizophrenia travels across Australia to find a girl who may or may not exist, Eternal Beauty’s narrative is much more complex, even confounding, and precisely what endpoint it is seeking is vague.

Reviews

Possessor Uncut

Possessor Uncut is a surprisingly undercooked psychological horror from Brandon Cronenberg.  It’s filled with provocative qualities, but they’ve been assembled in a way that doesn’t come together and, instead, work as standalone strengths.

Reviews

Money Machine

Money is power, but it is also the root of evil.  As inhabitants of a Judeo-Christian capitalist society, this is a paradox that we all often find ourselves wrestling with: the idea that money is a malevolent force that we must seek out at the same time if we wish to coexist with others.  Sometimes, this paradox stops existing in the background and slaps us in the face.  Money Machine is an attempt at just…

Reviews

The Last Laugh

For a movie about comedians, writer/director Jeremy Berg’s The Last Laugh is utterly void of mirth.  Unfortunately, this isn’t just a film that takes itself far too seriously – it lacks vibrancy and life all together.

Reviews

We Are Many

By: Jolie Featherstone We Are Many offers an inspiring – dare I say celebratory – look at the organization and outcomes of the largest protest in human history.  Indeed, an estimated 30 million people (many of whom had never attended a protest before) in over 800 cities across the entire globe collectively protested the US’ war in Iraq on February 15, 2003.

Reviews

Tesla

Tesla, written and directed by Michael Almereyda (Hamlet [2000], Majorie Prime), explores the famous Serbian inventor with an ostensible inventiveness in both narrative and form.  While the experimentation is welcome and even appropriate, its application is uneven and questionable, and leads to an uncertain overall thesis.

Reviews

The King of Staten Island

The King of Staten Island is another win for director Judd Apatow, who last left movie goers with his career-best work in Trainwreck.  It appears, though, that the filmmaker was preparing for The King of Staten Island with Trainwreck.  Just as he gave comedienne Amy Schumer a platform to expand on her own stand-up about her self-consciousness with the opposite sex, he gives SNL comic Pete Davidson this movie to explore his upbringing in this,…

Reviews

Blackbird

By: Jessica Goddard Despite its inexplicable first-rate cast, Blackbird is an eye-rollingly disappointing take on the terminal illness drama from director Roger Michell (Notting Hill, My Cousin Rachel).  Screenwriter Christian Torpe paints with a bland palette of stock characters to slap together a narrative infested with clichés and unnatural one-liners, leading nowhere of interest.

Reviews

DTF

What begins as an attempt to record a widowed, middle-aged pilot’s efforts to find true love on the dating app Tinder quickly morphs into something much darker and chaotic in director Al Bailey’s documentary DTF.  As the pilot in question, an old friend of Bailey’s identified only by the pseudonym “Christian”, reveals increasingly outlandish and destructive behavior, the original premise of the film is abandoned in favour of an exploration of the toxic, hard-partying world…

Reviews

Nadia, Butterfly

Pascal Plante’s Nadia, Butterfly eerily takes place at the now-cancelled 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and follows a French Canadian Olympian swimmer as she participates in her final event as a professional athlete.  Lovingly directed yet glacially paced, Nadia, Butterfly boasts some excellent performances and cinematography, but struggles to overcome its vague characterizations and meandering screenplay.