The Toopy and Binoo franchise, featuring a very confident motor-mouth mouse named Toopy and a kindhearted mute kitten named Binoo, is new territory for me. I’m unable to comment on whether it’s faithful to the book series created by the movie’s co-director/co-writer Dominique Jolin or the animated television show co-created by Jolin and the film’s co-director/co-writer Raymond Lebrun.
While the troublemaking cat-and-mouse duo Tom and Jerry run amok in the United States, their opposite (and far removed) distant cousins of the North, a confident mouse named Toopy and a mute kitty named Binoo, are teaching children wholesome lessons and having lighthearted fun.
Serpent’s Lullaby writer/director Patricia Chica, who has always been busy with making short films and music videos, completes an effortless transition to feature-length storytelling with her debut Montréal Girls, an affable vehicle for herself and her breakout leads. The movie pushes past its familiarity with notes of magic realism and method acting. The results are impressive, though the story still rings some bells.
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.
Thematic crossovers and shared stories are bound to happen when so many movies are being released close together; these flukes are not uncommon. While it’s easy for movie goers to gripe about déjà vu, it’s hard to complain when the separate works are good in their own right.
In anticipation of the home release of the Canadian doc July Talk: Love Lives Here, Wylie Writes’ Trevor Chartrand and Jolie Featherstone both reviewed the movie. Did they like it? Do they agree with each other? Check out their takes!
So Much Tenderness reunites me with Colombian-Canadian filmmaker Lina Rodriguez eight years after reviewing her feature-length debut Señoritas. While I can see a bit of growth between then and now, Rodriguez is still stuck in her naturalistic, fly-on-the-wall approach to personal character studies.
The exposure of Canada’s reprehensible history with its former residential school system and the overall injustice towards this country’s Indigenous population keeps garnering attention. Written and directed by Marie Clements (The Road Forward), Bones of Crows is the latest movie to continue presenting the contemporary prejudice that mirrors the past.
Using his previous film, the embellished period thriller Operation Avalanche, as a stepping stone towards his latest feature, Canadian renegade Matt Johnson takes another crack at the biopic genre with BlackBerry. Director Johnson (co-writing with frequent collaborator/producer Matthew Miller) chronicles the rise and fall of the titular game-changing portable device that allowed users online access and exclusive text-based communication.
The End of Sex is the latest collaboration between director Sean Garrity (Borealis, I Propose We Never See Each Other Again After Tonight) and screenwriter/actor Jonas Chernick (Ashgrove).