Known as “The G” to family, anger hangs off of Ann Hunter (Dale Dickey of Leave No Trace and Hell or High Water). As the primary caregiver for her ailing husband despite feeling as though everyone perceives her as a liability, Ann doesn’t have time to sugarcoat anything through her utter exhaustion. When she and her husband are abruptly relocated from their suburban home to a care facility by their legal guardian, Ann is upset…
Cat-and-mouse thriller Pins & Needles can’t escape its flaws. Unfortunately for editor-turn-filmmaker James Villeneuve, there’s plenty of them in his feature-length debut (which had its world premiere last month at the Blood in the Snow Canadian Film Festival).
Much like Netflix’s anthology series Easy and the buddy comedy Platonic on Apple TV+, Matt and Mara is a micro-scaled drama, with humourous moments, that unpacks a fractured relationship. Deragh Campbell and Blackberry’s Matt Johnson, reunited with Anne at 13,000 Ft. writer/director Kazik Radwanski, portray writers who have followed separate paths. As Matt in the movie, Johnson plays an ambitious published writer who, while visiting Toronto, reconnects with former friend Mara (Campbell). Mara has since settled down with her musician husband…
A life of tragedy is recounted in Memoir of a Snail, a melancholic stop-motion animated film for mature audiences from writer/director Adam Elliot (Mary and Max). Following the death of their closest friend, Grace (voiced by Sarah Snook of HBO’s Succession and Netflix’s Run Rabbit Run) frees one of her pet snails. From the time it takes the snail to leave Grace and arrive to its garden destination, Grace reflects on her life leading up to this heartbreak;…
Conclave is an efficient chamber piece; evoking curiousities of how a pope is chosen as well as suggesting what cutthroat decisions happen before smoke bellows out of the Vatican to update the unsuspecting public. Overseen by Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes of The Menu), the voting procedures that follow the death of a former pope strike Lawrence at a time of doubting his faith. He keeps this vulnerability close to his chest, but is called…
Ten years ago, I gained new respect for Peter Lepeniotis. The Canadian animator was coming off the success of his first independently directed feature, The Nut Job, and he was very candid about the film industry with the audience at TIFF Kids. He was a great storyteller and a fountain of knowledge. But despite being a seasoned pro, Lepeniotis is still finding ways to challenge himself; such as with R.L. Stine’s Zombie Town, the filmmaker’s live-action directorial…
Your Monster is billed as a horror-fantasy, with notes of a rom-com, featuring a Broadway hopeful (Melissa Barrera) discovering a hunky beast (Tommy Dewey) in her closet. Sounds wild, right? What if I told you writer/director Caroline Lindy plays everything “straight”? What if I told you that the film is so quiet, you can hear the emptiness between lines of dialogue? Granted, this is a deliberate choice to play up the film’s quirkier qualities, but…
Second Chance Productions’ Gracie & Pedro: Pets to the Rescue is an animated road movie for the kiddies that doesn’t pooch the audience on a good time. Prim-and-proper pup Gracie (voiced by Claire Alan) and feisty feline Pedro (voiced by Cory Doran) embark on their family’s big move to Salt Lake City, but the trip doesn’t go smoothly. The animals topple off-track in their shared carrier before boarding their plane and end up missing their flight. Realizing…
By: Addison Wylie Preceding an amicable exchange between ex-lovers, Andy Goodrich (Michael Keaton) is asked by his former wife Ann (Andie MacDowell) how he’s doing. “I’m okay,” Andy answers. “You’re always okay,” Ann teases. She isn’t wrong. Throughout Goodrich, the audience observes Andy doing okay. He occasionally has an awkward conversation that sometimes references his past as a flawed father but, otherwise, he’s a well-respected and levelheaded dude.
Donald Trump has denounced The Apprentice. Not to be confused with his hit reality show of the past, The Apprentice is a docudrama chronicling the relationship between Trump and lawyer Roy Cohn. But, it seems as though the former president has misinterpreted Ali Abbasi’s movie as a biopic on his life as a businessman-turn-infamous mogul. There are biographical elements to The Apprentice , but the focus isn’t specific enough to be a Trump biopic. If Trump had stepped back, he would’ve seen that…