Win It All
Life can fluctuate, and I believe that’s the point Win It All is trying to make. Then again, filmmaker Joe Swanberg may have just set out to make a straightforward character study, in which case that works too.
Indie
Menorca
Movies can be delicious, such as this year’s rom-com Bakery in Brooklyn. Despite the fresh food, the charming chemistry between the two leading women is what made the film buoyant. On the other end of the scale, you have Menorca, which is deliciously bad. This film feeds us so much camp, we’re begging for more when the movie begins to clam up.
Hello Destroyer
Kevan Funk’s Hello Destroyer, a complicated and clinical disclosure of the underlying traumas associated with hockey, was well-received at TIFF last year for a good reason: there aren’t many films brave enough to de-mythologize Canada’s national sport.
Dark Night
After a tragedy, a countdown subtly begins as to when a filmmaker will try to document the event’s emotions and peril in a movie. The act of making a movie about Aurora, Colorado’s massacre during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises never occurred to me. Then again, I also didn’t expect Patriot’s Day, a film about the Boston Marathon bombing released four years after the attack.
The Red Maple Leaf
In Frank D’Angelo’s The Red Maple Leaf, special agent Alfonso Palermo (D’Angelo) asks potential suspects to “indulge him” during interrogations. I’ve heard some describe D’Angelo’s filmmaking as indulgent, which is why I smirked whenever Palermo asked this. Whether this was a cheeky wink toward critics is a mystery, and will probably remain unanswered.
Kiss and Cry
Kiss and Cry is a lovely Canadian companion to Josh Boone’s crowd-pleaser The Fault in Our Stars.
Nocturne
Often, you’ll hear a film criticized for having a premise that’s more suited for a short film rather than a feature-length movie. Filmmaker Saul Pincus, who has a background in making shorts, has surely caught wind of this comment because you can see the mechanics in his latest breakout indie Nocturne try to dodge this nitpick.
Short Stay
Short Stay is a barely releasable anti-movie, yet writer/director Ted Fendt – a short film storyteller – probably classifies his feature-length debut as a success.