I can picture filmmaker Braden Sitter Sr. watching the news and becoming sidetracked by the ticker scrolling across the bottom of the screen. I can also picture the filmmaker getting lost down a rabbit hole of ridiculous clickbait articles on social media. This isn’t a knock against Braden because a movie as off-the-wall as his unauthorized comedy The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man needs sheer mischievous curiousity to make it work, and there’s no shortage of…
In Mouthpiece, two women play the lead character. Not with strategic editing or a duel Sliding Doors-esque narrative, but simultaneously on-screen. While this may sound like an excuse for the filmmakers to showboat and earn arthouse cred, the results couldn’t be farther from being just a fancy trick.
If The People Garden inspired me in any way, it reminded me that I really should mail filmmakers Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas a thank-you letter for 2013’s The Oxbow Cure. I’m not comparing both Canadian dramas (which also, coincidentally, take place in the woods), but if a filmmaker creates a minimalist movie, they ought to have a resonating voice.