By: Trevor Chartrand Donkeyhead is the first feature film from writer/director Agam Darshi, who has extensive credits both in front of and behind the camera. Her film focuses on Mona (played by Darshi herself), the least-successful sibling among the four brothers and sisters in her family. As a failed writer, she is the only one among them who still lives at home, aimless in her pursuits with no job and no prospects. Instead of pursuing…
By: Trevor Chartrand See For Me, directed by Randall Okita (The Lockpicker), is an engaging thriller that’s sort-of a reverse Don’t Breathe. In both films, a blind person fends off would-be home invaders – but in Okita’s movie, our visually-impaired lead character is not a sadistic sociopath – she’s (mostly) a good person.
Goon: Last of the Enforcers arrives five years after the surprise hit Goon, and it’s as if the audience never left these characters. Even though the film is working under a different director (Jay Baruchel taking over for Michael Dowse), this sequel makes sure it stays within the same surly vein as its delightfully crude predecessor.
The original Goon (2011) was a special thing: an indie sports-comedy that was funny without being over-the-top, and heartfelt without being outright cheesy. It was also indisputably Canadian without relying on stereotypes or clichés. The film made the audience care about Doug (Seann William Scott), a dim-witted but kind bouncer from Massachusetts who uses his better-than-average brawling skills to become a professional enforcer for a minor-league hockey team in Halifax. We were invested in his…
I impulsively summarized True Memoirs of an International Assassin on Twitter by typing, “really wish True Memoirs of an International Assassin used its strengths to subvert the action genre. Still not bad, just indistinguishable”.
Bodyguards often have the most interesting stories and they take pride in telling them, so it’s no surprise that a documentary like Jaren Hayman’s Bodyguards: Secret Lives from the Watchtower exists. It’s more than possible for a filmmaker to scrounge up enough material to provide a riveting peek into this line of work.