NEVER LOOK AWAY Review: A Dangerously Extraordinary Life
Journalism is in crisis; in part due to people now getting their news from social media, in part due to the web forcing many newspapers and television outlets to publish their work for free; in part due to people not...
DREAM TEAM Review: Analogue Aesthetics and Conspiring Coral
Imagine it's the 90s, in the early days of wide home computer use, with dial-up models, compact discs as the main mode of music listening, and you've fallen asleep in front of your television. You wake up in a dark...
SPIRIT IN THE BLOOD Review: Coming of Age Surrrounded by Monsters
I don't want to discount the possibility of the supernatural, since there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy, but most 'monsters; do turn out to be human. And more often than not,...
VENOM: THE LAST DANCE Review: Third Time's Sort of The Charm
Given how the Marvel stranglehold on entertainment has been loosened as of late, it can be hard for fans to know what to expect from a current Marvel film. It's become clear that having to be an expert across multiple...
Montreal Nouveau 2024 Review: SCHIRKOA: IN LIES WE TRUST, Anonymous Dystopia to Queer Utopia
Authoritarian dystopian futures, as imagined by writers, artists, and filmmakers, often have familiar tropes, usually about the neutralization of individuality, the importance of conformity, and how it eventually becomes impossible to keep the brightness and individuality of the human spirit...
Montreal Nouveau 2024 Review: ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL
It's hard to imagine what any of us would do, if we were driving along a quite road and came across a dead body, let alone the body of a member of our family. For Shula (Susan Chardy), on her...
Montreal Nouveau 2024 Review: THE HUMAN HIBERNATION, Under a Cow's Eye
Like many Canadians (and others who live in a colder climate), I often dream - at least fleetingly - about hibernating for the winter, like our bear brethren. Sleeping away those colder months, and reawakening with the earth as it...
Montreal Nouveau 2024 Review: THE HYPERBOREANS, The Puppetry of Memory
Human memory is fallable, at least on an individual level; though as some cultures can tell you, a poor memory has also been of great service to larger groups of people who need to forget, or need others to forget,...
WOMAN OF THE HOUR Review: A Date with a Killer
Women are not believed. This has been true for decades (if not centuries) and it has allowed men to perpetrate terrible crimes, almost in plain sight, without remorse or consequences. I realise this is something of a blanket statement (yes,...
EMILIA PÉREZ, A DIFFERENT MAN, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE and More at SCAD Savannah 2024
Regional film festivals are the unsung heroes of the film circuit. They bring smaller titles to a local audience that might not otherwise get to see them, and they can also bring the larger films with their stars, directors, and...
NOSFERATU Trailer: We Are, Apparently, Succumbing to the Darkness
While there are no end of variations on the vampire story, and indeed we've been able to dive into the lore of this particular monster and its incarntions across a multitude of cultures, there is something about the image of...
EMILIA PÉREZ Trailer: Glorious Women, Music & Guns
With the official trailer for Emilia Pérez dropping today, I'm still not entirely sure what the film is about, or how all these women fit together. I do know what French auteur Jacques Audiard is capable of, with films as...
SLEEP Review: On the Merits of Insomnia
Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) and Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun) are the sweetest young couple, full of promise and hope. Soo-jin works in business, hoping to make her way to the executive branch. Hyun-su is an actor; while he's only had small roles,...
LEE Review: Kate Winslet Shines in World War II Biopic
It might be hard for younger generations to now believe, given the proliferation of doctored photographs, photoshop manipulation, and now the spectre of terrible AI that makes it hard to trust anything we see - but at one point in...
PRESENCE To Open Sitges 2024; Alexandre Aja's NEVER LET GO To Close
This was one of the hardest festival news articles I've had to write. Why? Because I can't attend Sitges this year, and their line-up, always great, is even more stellar than usual. Each paragraph brough tears to my eyes, thinking...
SEEKING MAVIS BEACON Review: An Internet Mystery Unveils a Racial Injustice
I still remember the middle school classroom where I learned to type, on (dating myself here) one of the early generation Apple computers. My mother had gone to the same school; she remembers when it was full of typewriters. But...
BLINK TWICE Review: The Gift? Of Laughter and Forgetting
The ritual of Catholic confession has never felt quite right to me; to each their own, but the idea that you can simply say some words that apparently mean you repent for some sins and that gets you into your...
UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE Trailer: The Fierce Embrace of Multiculturalism
Oh, Canada. We like to call you a mosaic, a land in which people are free to maintain their culture and language, and to a certain extent, this is true. Growing up in Toronto, now living in Montreal, I love...
NOT A PRETTY PICTURE Blu-ray Review: A Meta Examination of Deep Trauma
Martha Coolidge might be more known for her teen-focused comedies such as Valley Girl and The Prince and Me, but her work has always been forward-thinking in representations of women, and likely none of her films showcase this more than...
LE SAMOURAÏ Blu-ray Review: On the Elegance of a Revolver
Every filmmaker wants the perfect opening shot; but then, can the rest of the film live up to it? Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samuraï is one such film, that gives not just an iconic opening shot, but many in between, with...
