Horror movies often have an allegorical thread within them and, currently, it’s hard to spot a story in one of these spooky flicks that doesn’t also double for another, deeper meaning. While the efforts are usually appreciated when filmmakers try to push themselves, sometimes their movies are simply too good at fulfilling the broader strokes. Such is the case for Bishal Dutta’s It Lives Inside.
Golda kicks off a season of “Oscar bait”, movies that try very hard to make an impression towards the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As much as Guy Nattiv’s film may have been conceived from a good place, with the movie’s heavy use of make-up and prosthetics to transform Oscar-winner Helen Mirren into Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, it’s hard for viewers to dismiss this possible pandering.
Thematic crossovers and shared stories are bound to happen when so many movies are being released close together; these flukes are not uncommon. While it’s easy for movie goers to gripe about déjà vu, it’s hard to complain when the separate works are good in their own right.
There’s a purposeful lack of characterization in How to Blow Up a Pipeline because the story is built off of shared passion and mutual frustration between a team of amateur environmental activists/eco-terrorists who are tired of waiting for a difference to be made. They’ve been pushed to their limits after being promised that a change is approaching. How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a very angry movie, and it’s also one of the best…
Leading the Canadian Screen Awards with 14 nominations, Brother is an enthralling family drama that’s well realized by Lie With Me director Clement Virgo. Though comparisons to 2016’s Oscar winner Moonlight and 2019’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco are inevitable given the coming-of-age material and how a family’s dynamic is examined during a sprawling time frame, Brother still stands out as a true Canadian original.
The Quiet Girl appears to tell a simple story about a young girl, Cáit (newcomer Catherine Clinch, who shows incredible range in her brilliant and award-winning acting debut). She’s relocated to live with foster parents for a Summer to relieve the tension in her household. The house she moves to temporarily is owned by a sweet, older couple (Carrie Crowley, Andrew Bennett), and Cáit is almost immediately met with nurturing support. Following an expected trope in…
Canadian indie Door Mouse is organically cool, and writer/director Avan Jogia knows it (most of the time).
Academy Award-winning director Laura Poitras (Citizenfour; My Country, My Country) doesn’t hold back in her latest documentary, a devastating portrait of fiery artist and activist Nan Goldin. Words like “heartbreaking” and “inspiring” are insufficient to describe this powerful story of community, activism, and survival.
