You Gotta Believe is a sports movie that’s as hokey as you could, well, believe. Based around the true story of Little Leaguers who made an impression on sports fans when the team earned a ranking in 2002’s Little League Baseball World Series championship, You Gotta Believe pulls out all the stops to grab families by their heartstrings. However, the film doesn’t feel manipulative. As he exhibited in his heavier sports drama 12 Mighty Orphans, director Ty Roberts…
In Seagrass, writer/director Meredith Hama-Brown uses a tired-and-true formula of the “family getaway” to uncover new wrinkles in an, otherwise, ordinary unit.
Based on the memoir North of Normal by Canadian author Cea Sunrise Person, Carly Stone’s drama of the same name is about a very interesting mother-daughter dynamic that’s been influenced by an unconventional upbringing and the ripple effect made by varying degrees of neglect.
All My Puny Sorrows, directed by One Week’s Michael McGowan, is cut from similar cloth as last year’s outstanding, sad drama Our Friend. Carried by a small yet mighty cast who are all approaching sensitive material under the guidance of a cautious filmmaker, All My Puny Sorrows tracks how deep mental illness can run within a family’s dynamic, and how it affects its members.
By: Jessica Goddard Our own Addison Wylie mentioned I probably shouldn’t watch the trailer for Lawrence Michael Levine’s Black Bear, since it would be better to go in cold.…and boy was he right. When I tracked down the trailer after seeing the film, I was shocked by how much it gives away. So in that spirit, I’ll warn that this review contains what are, effectively, spoilers (though that’s not the perfect word).
Pardon me for sounding blasé, but I can’t help but clench when a Canadian film makes supernatural suggestions. Other than the odd exception (A Sunday Kind of Love), these are ideas that are usually squandered of their potential (Considering Love & Other Magic). Imagine my surprise in Octavio Is Dead!, the latest filmmaking effort from Shortbus actor Sook-Yin Lee, when the writer/director treaded familiar ground but drove her film in a darker direction; blending different…
The Girl King arrives with a certain amount of baggage due to its connection to a classic of cinematic history.
By: Shahbaz Khayambashi What do you get when you mix together the worst parts of modern royalsploitation, teenage “girls just wanna have fun” cinema, and a hint of “war is bad, but support the troops”? Julian Jarrold’s insipid A Royal Night Out, the sort of imperialistic romantic comedy that would turn a hopeless romantic into a hardened cynic!