Director Kire Paputts follows up his modest feature debut The Rainbow Kid with The Last Porno Show, an envelope-pushing character drama chronicling the personal arc of an aspiring actor taking over his estranged father’s faded adults-only move theatre. It’s a really good movie that doesn’t shy away from anything and bares it all. It stuck to me like shoes to the floor of a sold-out screening room.
Somewhere in Dave Hill’s character drama Flying Cars is a really interesting documentary about radio-controlled car racing and its niche community.
The Rest of Us needs a low triple-digit runtime, but sets up a needless challenge for itself to tell its story in under 80 minutes. What’s the hurry? And if filmmaker Aisling Chin-Yee has to compromise the narrative with condensed scenes and sharp edits to win the challenge, what’s the point?
The Incoherents is a charming, if somewhat cheesy and predictable, comedy that follows four forty-something men who attempt to revive their dreams of rock stardom by reuniting their old band.
There seems to be an unhealthy trend of shooting and wrapping film productions within a short time frame (A Fall from Grace, Appiness). But for Toronto indie Space & Time, writer/director Shawn Gerrard sees the appeal of a patient process. Space & Time has been shot over the period of 11 months; allowing the film to naturally capture the passage of, well, space and time. This lends a potentially special quality to the film’s story…
Greener Grass is a suburban social comedy dressed up as an irreverent weirdo. While it may paint itself into a corner by setting a high bar for itself, I loved being in its company nonetheless.
Road to the Lemon Grove is at its best when it indulges fully in its love affair with Sicily. Montages of food in market stalls, picturesque coastlines, narrow streets, fruit trees, donkeys – these are the most pleasurable moments in the film. Unfortunately, they are all too frequently interrupted by a forced plot, underdeveloped characters, and an awkward premise.
The Peanut Butter Falcon is an outstanding example of how filmmakers can make an in-the-moment crowd-pleaser and push it towards being a timeless classic. Written and directed by Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz, The Peanut Butter Falcon is a road movie that plays as a contemporary take on American fables; filled with recovering characters that are all endearing in their own ways.
What do you do when you live in an age of renewed Trumpian nuclear anxiety and wish to express the doomed future of the youth therein? If you’re William Scoular, you make Survival Box, a film so navel-gazing in its execution that, by the end of its runtime, it can only be described as an answer to a question no one asked.
One of the best things about moviegoing is watching a rising star come into their own element. Up-and-coming actors are always praised for this, but we don’t shed enough light on indie filmmakers who finally find the right vehicle for them.