Golden Dawn Girls (DIR. Håvard Bustnes) Håvard Bustnes’ Golden Dawn Girls is a feature-length interview-of-sorts with several female relatives of Nikolaos Michaloliakos, the head of the far-right, Greek “social nationalist” party known as Golden Dawn.
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.
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…
All of us should occasionally stop and consider how lucky we are to have the TIFF Bell Lightbox. On top of the populist arthouse fare that populates the majority of their schedule, the Lightbox occasionally introduces a brand-new audience to underrated, underappreciated, or simply underseen filmmakers. The latest addition to this tradition is the Goethe Institute-curated mini-retrospective, Ulrike Ottinger in Asia; a program of four features, three of which are Ottinger’s celebrations of various Asian cultures (the…
There are some things that Andrey Zvyagintsev is very good at, such as political commentary. There are some things that Zvyagintsev is awful at, such as portrayals (or occasionally even the inclusion) of women in his films. So, what happens when Zvyagintsev makes a political film with a female lead? You end up with a disappointing monstrosity; one that could have been a masterpiece if a good forty percent was discarded. You end up with…
It has been five years since Michael Haneke’s last film, the Palme d’Or and Oscar-winning Amour. In that time, the world has been witness to ISIS execution videos, murders on Facebook Live, and the livestreaming of someone’s brutal death after an auto accident. With that much material, Haneke has returned with Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant to gift the world Happy End, a film that looks at modern technology’s ability to capture atrocities, set within…
In the mid-2000’s, a copy of Caché in a Rogers Video would be my introduction to the works of Michael Haneke, and what an introduction it was. I had heard of a shocking moment in Caché, and I was still unprepared for it. A decade later, I had seen every feature that Haneke had made, always salivating for the next. This is why it was such a shock to me when I was told that,…
Two teenage girls come-of-age in a small town. They use “teen speak”, spend all their time on social media, and find themselves consumed by their various hobbies. What makes Tragedy Girls different from a plethora of similar films is that one of these girls’ hobbies is murder.
This critic sometimes finds it impossible to believe the sort of films that premiere at film festivals. As I have warned you before, the Toronto After Dark Film Festival is particularly guilty of this cinematic crime when it comes to their world premieres. I would love to be proven wrong, but the streak continues.