Mongrel Media

Reviews

The Humans

The Humans is the type of movie that makes you want to jump through the screen.  Not because the film has transported you and swallowed you up, but rather because you want a better seat and you want to tell everyone to speak up.

Reviews

Julia

By: Trevor Chartrand From the Oscar-nominated directors of RBG, Julia is an endearing documentary that showcases the life and times of the cooking show pioneer, Julia Child.  The film takes a biographical look at her charmingly humble rise to fame, from cook-book writer to television star.  The documentary has a lot of personality and examines snippets of her off-camera personal life as well as her positive impact on the cooking industry as a whole.  This is…

Reviews

Nine Days

Written and directed by Edson Oda, Nine Days is a metaphysical film that follows a lonely man named Will, played by Winston Duke (Black Panther, Us), who is tasked with interviewing human souls and deciding which one will be given a chance to live.  One soul in particular, Emma (Zazie Beetz), is an independent thinker who resists the tasks Will assigns and forces him to examine his own existence.

Reviews

The Rescue

From the Academy Award winning team who brought you Free Solo comes The Rescue, a documentary that chronicles the 2018 search-and-rescue of the Wild Boars soccer team who were trapped in a flooding cave in Thailand.

Reviews

Best Sellers

Films are rewarded when they think outside the box and resist their genre’s conventions.  But sometimes, a movie can remind us of how narrative prerequisites can be misinterpreted as cliché by indifferent filmmakers.

Reviews

Censor

Is a movie still a success if it didn’t come through on its initial promise, yet still left an effective impression? I had a similar reaction earlier this year to Saint Maud, and here I am again with Censor, a horror from writer/director Prano Bailey-Bond that moved me even though I was never truly scared.

Reviews

398 Days: Hostage

By: Trevor Chartrand Based on a true story, 398 Days: Hostage is the harrowing account of a Danish photographer captured, tortured and held hostage in Syria for over a year.  Young and ambitious, our protagonist Daniel Rye Ottosen (Esben Smed) is an Olympic contender with the Danish gymnastics team, until a knee injury shatters his dreams of pursuing the gold medal.  Short on prospects and in need of work, Daniel starts his career over with…

Reviews

Held

If Saw’s Jigsaw Killer received his doctorate in marriage therapy, his counselling would resemble the drawn-out home invasion portrayed in Held, a sanctimonious and straight-up stupid thriller that squanders its potential for big scares in small spaces.

Reviews

Death of a Ladies’ Man

By: Trevor Chartrand In the delightfully surreal Death of a Ladies’ Man, director Matt Bissonette addresses some hard-hitting subjects in a mature (yet somehow silly) way.  This darkly funny film was heavily influenced and inspired by the work of Leonard Cohen, and the late artist’s presence in the film will not go unnoticed.  The film explores themes and ideas present in Cohen’s music, and features a soundtrack that includes plenty of Cohen songs.

Reviews

Stray

Showing different perspectives from the streets of Istanbul, filmmaker Elizabeth Lo explores the day-to-day lifestyle of stray dog Zeytin in Stray.  There are brief transitions to other viewpoints provided by fellow pooches or human beings, but Zeytin is certainly the star of the show.