By: Anthony King GOING IN: It’s time to head to Germany for the biggest, loudest, and probably craziest heavy metal festival on the planet; a three day festival where you’re free to release that inner metal freak, and scream or growl all day and night to your heart’s content. Every year, the small village of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein Germany hosts the Wacken Open Air festival featuring heavy metal bands from Lamb of God to Alice Cooper….
By: Shannon Page Vin Diesel (Fast & Furious 6, Guardians of the Galaxy) carries most of the weight in The Last Witch Hunter, director Breck Eisner’s fantasy-thriller about a medieval warrior (Diesel) cursed with immortality and locked in an eight-hundred year battle against evil magical forces bent on the destruction of humanity. Diesel’s wooden performance does nothing to distract from the fact that the script is tired and obvious, but even the most worn-out premises…
By: Shahbaz Khayambashi Lenny Abrahamson follows Frank, his underrated study of the effects of mental isolation on the human psyche, with the TIFF People’s Choice Award-winning Room, which looks at the other side of the matter: the effects of physical isolation on the human psyche. The film tells the story of a woman (Brie Larson) and her five year old son (Jacob Tremblay), both of whom have been kept prisoners in a man’s shed for seven…
By: Addison Wylie If you haven’t heard of African journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, he’s doing a good job hiding his identity. Few have seen him face-to-face, but this is because his safety and his flourishing career depends on staying incognito. Even in Ryan Mullins’ documentary Chameleon, Anas’ face is either blurred out or obscured for good reason. Anas’ groundbreaking investigative journalism mixes elements of crime-fighting. Using his ability to illustrate a story and set up…
By: Shannon Page Directed by Jeffrey Schwarz (I am Divine, Vito) and based on the memoir Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, Tab Hunter Confidential explores the life and career of matinee idol Tab Hunter. After he was discovered by a movie agent, Hunter became, as fellow actor George Takei so aptly states in the film, the “embodiment of youthful American masculinity”. With his blond hair, blue eyes, and natural charm, Hunter…
By: Shahbaz Khayambashi After the saccharine dramatics of Monsieur Lazhar and The Good Lie, Philippe Falardeau has finally returned to his comedic roots – the place where his talent truly shines – with his hilarious new film, My Internship in Canada. In this satirical take on Canadian politics, a Member of Parliament named Steve Guibord (Patrick Huard), holding power over three small Quebecois towns, finds himself as the single deciding vote on whether or not…
By: Shannon Page Sibling filmmakers Ravi and Geeta Patel’s Meet the Patels is a feel-good documentary/romantic comedy hybrid that achieves everything that it sets out to do. The film, which began as a home video of a trip that the Patel family took to India, follows Ravi’s journey to find the woman of his dreams while navigating the expectations of his Indian-American family as well as his own connection to his cultural and heritage. It…
By: Addison Wylie I don’t regret liking HBO’s Entourage even though Doug Ellin’s cinematic continuation of the hit TV series stinks. The television show offered a sleek albeit heightened look into the politics and smooth-talkers behind Hollywood. Actor Vincent Chase was a lucrative asset to any major motion picture, and his friends witnessed this as they tagged along for the ride. Frequently vulgar and overtly macho, Entourage was amusing escapism that made filmdom look and…
By: Shannon Page Written and directed by Jeff Lipsky (Twelve Thirty, Molly’s Theory of Everything), Mad Women aims to challenge audience’s perceptions of desire and family by fearlessly ripping into taboo territory – but whether it succeeds or not is up for debate. Nevada Smith (Kelsey Lynn Stokes) is an attractive young woman struggling to find her place in a family of over-achievers that include her older sister, a doctor working overseas; her father (Reed…
By: Mark Barber The Creeping Garden – a documentary about the professional and amateur fascination with slime mould in the scientific community – is a film without an argument; a particularly troublesome direction to take with the documentary genre. The film begins misleadingly with archival news footage detailing the discovery of an unknown, slimy substance found in Texas, suggesting that the direction the film will be a generic blend between documentary and horror; similar to two…