TWO CUCKOLDS GO SWIMMING, UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE, and More at the Inaugural Edition of Montreal Critics Week
A new film festival is always cause for celebration, and in winter in Montreal, I and other cinephiles looking for a reason to get out of the house. It's long overdue that this city have a critics week, and we're...
8 1/2 Blu-ray Review: Return to a Work of Grand Wonder
That should probably read: one of Federico Fellini's masterpieces. The fact that he followed La Dolce Vita merely a year later with 8 1/2 puts the Italian auteur in a rarefied group of filmmakers who have pulled off a one-two...
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN Review: The Coles Notes of Bob Dylan
It's not surprising that there is a probable audience for a biopic on Bob Dylan, America's greatest folk singer/songwriter, a true living legend who has released over 50 albums, and is still going strong, doing tour at the venerable age...
THE END Review: A Song For the Discordant Last
Perhaps because we feel, more so than ever, at the edge of a possible fall of civilzation as we know it, the destruction of the environment to the point of unsustainability, but likely many of us have thought about (either...
ENDLESS SUMMER SYNDROME Trailer: Fearing What We Love
It can't be easy (to put it mildly) to have someone close to you accused of a terrible crime, especially if that crime is committed against someone else who is close to you. It might seem obvious to those looking...
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...
