Alice Lowe

Festival Coverage

Toronto After Dark 2021: ‘Paul Dood’s Deadly Lunch Break’

By: Trevor Chartrand Director Nick Gillespie’s Paul Dood’s Deadly Lunch Break is a hilarious dark comedy that combines 2019’s Joker with 2004’s Napoleon Dynamite – featuring an inept dancing social outcast who plots vigilante justice.  The titular Paul Dood (Tom Meeten) is a troubled man-baby who, despite living with his mother, has aspirations of achieving fame.  On his way to an important career-making audition, Paul is delayed by a series of rude and apathetic citizens,…

Reviews

Eternal Beauty

Eternal Beauty is ostensibly the second film to be released in recent months in which a character diagnosed with schizophrenia struggles with the broad issues of love, family, and life.  Unlike Luke Eve’s heavily saccharine I Met a Girl, where a man with schizophrenia travels across Australia to find a girl who may or may not exist, Eternal Beauty’s narrative is much more complex, even confounding, and precisely what endpoint it is seeking is vague.

Reviews

Sometimes Always Never

Sometimes Always Never sets out to be quirky, but comes out dorky.  It takes pride in its uneven nuances, gushy sentimentality, and jokes about Scrabble.  What saves the mild-mannered movie to an extent, however, is how the awkwardness is (sort of) embraced through its humour.