Clerks III
Clerks III features writer/director Kevin Smith “returning to the well” to follow up with everyone’s favourite perturbed convenience store employees, Dante and Randal.
Comedy
See How They Run
Set in the theatre district of London’s West End in 1953, a production of Agatha Christie’s whodunit The Mousetrap seems to be cursed after the body of flagrant director Leo Kopernick (Adrien Brody) turns up dead after the show. The jaded Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and rookie investigator Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) are assigned to the case, and it seems as if everyone’s a suspect: the actors, the crew, the waiting staff and, to Stalker’s…
TIFF 2022: ‘I Like Movies’
Set in the early-2000s, I Like Movies alternates between the double life of 17-year-old Burlington native Lawrence Kweller (Isiah Lehtinen) as an outspoken high school senior and an obsessive film buff at his local video store, Sequels Video. Lawrence is an opinionated know-it-all under both roofs, but he feels more in his element at Sequels and is elated when they finally hire him on as an employee.
Funny Pages
As rude and unappealing Funny Pages can be, it’s a brutally honest and funny character study of a young artist who channels trauma and grief into his aspirations to be a successful cartoonist. A true tale of an unlikely opportunist.
The Good Boss
The Good Boss offers a mannered approach to the self-destructive character study; separating it from similar company pitched in a much more frantic, anxiety-inducing tone (Nose to Tail, Uncut Gems).
Sharp Stick
I can’t remember that last time I wanted to grab the reigns of a movie as badly as I did while watching Sharp Stick, Lena Dunham’s return to directing self-written material since her acclaimed HBO series Girls. With this latest endeavour, Dunham is heading in a good direction with interesting and peculiar characters and then, two-thirds through the movie, Sharp Stick takes a hard turn into another character arc that seems like an unfair trade-off…
Vengeance
By: Jeff Ching Despite the title, Vengeance is really not a revenge movie (though revenge is part of the plot), and it’s especially not an action movie. Actually, it’s much better and smarter than what you’d expect. It’s a very ambitious film that attempts many things: it’s a fish-out-of-water comedy with a dark sense of humour, a murder mystery, it’s satirical, it’s philosophical. The movie has a lot to say about the current state of America…
The Nan Movie
The Nan Movie has made its way across the pond from the UK to North America like a rolling storm cloud. Sometimes though, an anticipated storm turns out to be pretty mellow and not the disaster you were expecting; a pleasant surprise, even. And sometimes, such is the case with The Nan Movie, that storm can hit you harder than you ever expected.
Stanleyville
By: Jeff Ching I was excited when I found out that Stanleyville was the feature directorial debut of Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, who wrote 2013’s The Father – one of the most criminally underrated dark comedies of all time. The Father was a Canadian film about a husband and father trying to move on with his life after dealing with the shocking news of his wife getting arrested for cheating on him…with a minor. What a concept, and a hilariously…