Being Canadian
I once took a German class taught by a sensitive and very literal Russian expat who, when hearing a few students joke that Poland didn’t exist (because Poland’s knack for rolling over at any sign of...
View ArticleHoly Hell! The Bridges of Madison County Turns 20
No other film in Clint Eastwood’s sizable filmography is like The Bridges of Madison County. Shot in verdant Iowan countryside, the film is a muted romantic melodrama that harks back to ‘50s women’s...
View Article99 Homes
Rahmin Bahrani’s low-key thriller 99 Homes centers on downtrodden construction worker Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) and the Faustian deal he makes with devilish real estate crook Rick Carver (Michael...
View ArticleOeuvre: Craven: The Last House on the Left
Two young women are raped, tortured and brutally murdered by escaped killers. The killers by chance visit a house that belongs to the parents of one of the victims, and when the worried mother and...
View ArticleStonewall
Stonewall takes the gay out of Stonewall. Directed by an ill-fitted Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow), the film turns the single most important event in gay liberation into a...
View ArticleWildlike
Wildlike, the new feature by director Frank Hall Green, is an adventure story of sorts. Our hero, a teenager named Mackenzie (raccoon-eyed Ella Purnell), gets shipped from Seattle to Juneau by her...
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Revisit: A Day in the Country
A Day in the Country may be best known as Jean Renoir’s unfinished masterpiece; however there is plenty in the 41 minutes that we do have to constitute a complete work. A bourgeoisie family takes a day...
View ArticleThe Walk
For film reviewers, a picture like The Walk is pure manna. We can get away with talking about nearly the entire movie without worrying about what we might be spoiling. That’s, in part, because the...
View Article10 Days in a Madhouse
Struggling journalist Nellie Bly was 23 years old when she feigned mental illness to infiltrate the notorious Women’s Lunatic Asylum on New York’s Blackwell’s Island. Her scathing exposé on the cruel...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Citizen Ruth
The moment Ruth Stoops storms onto the screen, shouting profanities and smashing a car window, I knew she was the woman for me. Ruth (Laura Dern) is a strung-out, hot-tempered drifter with a warped set...
View ArticleOeuvre: Craven: The Hills Have Eyes
Distinctive character actor Michael Berryman was born with a condition that meant he would never be able to grow hair, fingernails or teeth. But he’s gamely embraced typecasting as a horror movie...
View ArticleSicario
In Sicario, Denis Villeneuve has created another tense, heavily involving yet imperfect film. His 2010 breakthrough Incendies featured a riveting story that was undone by an improbable twist and its...
View ArticleThe Martian
We love stories of survival against all odds. Like a boy trapped in a well or the Chilean miners imprisoned in the bowels of the earth, there is something transcendent about the persistence of the...
View ArticlePartisan
The corruption of children at the hands of adults, and the eventual liberation of those kids, is becoming a genre unto itself in modern cinema. We are meant, rightfully, to balk at the treatment of...
View ArticleAddicted to Fresno
If this year’s Sleeping With Other People and Addicted to Fresno are to be believed, sex addiction is hilarious. Or, at the very least, the current edgy comedy premise of choice. While that aspect of...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: India Song
One of the essential precursors to the French New Wave, the Nouveau Roman movement appeared in the late ‘50s as a renegade successor to literary modernism, breaking the novel down to a series of...
View ArticleThe Forbidden Room
Canadian auteur Guy Maddin has built his entire career around an obsession with silent-era and early-sound-era cinema. His homages go beyond the superficial gimmickry of The Artist, Michel...
View ArticleOeuvre: Craven: Deadly Blessing
When I came to the obvious (and self-fulfilling) ending of the great Sam Raimi’s most overrated film Drag Me To Hell (2009) in which (spoiler warning), the protagonist is… dragged to hell, I couldn’t...
View ArticlePan
For a character who never grows up, Peter Pan tends to appear in movies as a reflection of adult hang-ups. Occasionally, there is a kind of poetry in this, as in the way that Hook used Peter to air out...
View ArticleGravy
In one of the most infamous scenes in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Zed rapes Marsellus Wallace to the strains of moody surf music. Tarantino originally wanted to use the Knack’s “My Sharona” for...
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