Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (a title that sounds like misheard lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”) is specific enough to be a filmmaker’s vision. The problem is writer/director Radu Jude hasn’t found a cohesive or accessible way to deliver that vision to audiences.
By: Jolie Featherstone Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci brings glitz, glam, star power, and seduction to the big screen. Decadent and grandiose, House of Gucci is chock-full of big hair, big glasses, and even bigger scandals set in the high fashion world of excess in the 1980s and 1990s.
Written and directed by Dégradé filmmakers Arab and Tarzan Nasser, Gaza Mon Amour is a sweet, subdued love story set in present-day Gaza.
The Humans is the type of movie that makes you want to jump through the screen. Not because the film has transported you and swallowed you up, but rather because you want a better seat and you want to tell everyone to speak up.
By: Trevor Chartrand From the Oscar-nominated directors of RBG, Julia is an endearing documentary that showcases the life and times of the cooking show pioneer, Julia Child. The film takes a biographical look at her charmingly humble rise to fame, from cook-book writer to television star. The documentary has a lot of personality and examines snippets of her off-camera personal life as well as her positive impact on the cooking industry as a whole. This is…
By: Jolie Featherstone With C’mon C’mon, writer/director Mike Mills (Beginners, 20th Century Women) continues to examine and affirm the vulnerable chambers of the heart and psyche that we so often fiercely guard from revealing to others. Reflective and poignant, his films are companions for the parts of us that we struggle to accept, particularly when it comes to reconciling individual experiences within the context of family.
A doc about filmmaker Kevin Smith poses an interesting challenge for the documentarian because Smith has been so open so often on public forums. What else can you explore that he hasn’t expanded on already? From feature-length behind-the-scenes bonus features to Smith’s lengthy discussions taped at colleges and concert venues, Smith has covered his life and career from (seemingly) every angle.
By: Trevor Chartrand JD Cohen’s Introducing Jodea looks and sounds like a movie slapped together by a high school student over the course of a weekend. From the first frame, the technical failings of the movie are painful, plentiful and impossible to miss. With a lacklustre cast and an agonizingly bland script, the movie ultimately leaves much to be desired.
Written and directed by Chris Green (Strangeways Here We Come), The Pebble and the Boy is a sweet, quirky coming-of-age story that is as much a celebration of mod culture as it is a story of grief and growing up.
