By: Jessica Goddard Bong Joon-ho’s Okja is not only packed with insight, imagination, and action, but mesmerizing visual effects. While this movie bounces around tonally, it’s consistently engaging and gripping. There are moments of camp and farce and exaggeration (cough cough – Jake Gyllenhaal – cough) but they are fun and mostly harmless. The premise is well-conceived, and the frequent use of subtitles under Korean dialogue is never fatiguing.
Crackle’s Fourth of July comedy Mad Families is a fart in the wind. While that reads as a low blow, I have a feeling the immature filmmakers will actually take that in stride.
The ReelHeART International Film & Screenplay Festival is currently underway until Saturday, July 8 featuring events all over the city of Toronto. I’ve seen two of this year’s selected documentaries and while these films belong in separate categories, both have a comparable criticism.
Kumail Nanjiani (played by funnyman Kumail Nanjiani) is a Pakistani-American comedian who meets and falls in love with Emily (Zoe Kazan), a graduate student. Their relationship is already threatened by Kumail’s parents’ insistence that he marry a woman from a Pakistani family, when Emily becomes seriously ill. Written by Nanjiani (usually known for his co-star work in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, Life as we Know It, and IFC’s Portlandia) and the actor’s wife Emily V. Gordon, The…
Nowhere To Hide portrays war-torn life through curious interviews and on-the-fly videography. The doc’s results are unnerving and scary, but essential when understanding a culture who were rediscovering themselves.
The craft of brilliant costume designers and make-up artists can transform the most recognizable actors into strangers. Such is the case for Manifesto, a one-woman-show featuring two-time Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett portraying 13 different roles. Of course, the production is also lucky to have one of the greatest living actors at the forefront. However, what Manifesto also displays is that sometimes the best artists overshoot their target.
Canada turns 150-years-old on Saturday, July 1, and film aficionados have been given two homegrown films to anticipate this historic birthday.
Shimmer Lake is Coen Brothers-lite, yet it aspires to be a film worthy enough to stand beside those famous quirky noirs from the Academy-Award winners. That would require Oren Uziel’s movie to be outrageous, which it isn’t. An unfortunate discovery considering the leads are terrific comedic actors.
Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press is a balanced documentary about what has inspired the current state of journalism.
Tyler Perry apologists may find pleasurable qualities in Sergio Navarretta’s The Colossal Failure of the Modern Relationship. Then again, even those movie goers have seen this sort of romantic peril too many times by now (the Why Did I Get Married? series).