There are certain movies which only exist because someone has needed to make them. They are too weird to be mainstream and too proud of their unusual style to truly be weird. This is by no means a complaint. When people lean very hard into style over substance it is …
Min Sook Lee is a veteran of the Canadian documentary filmmaking. With a history of producing documentaries since 2003, the South Korean-born and Toronto-raised director has a strong background in non-fiction. Since her debut, Sook Lee has released other films, such as Hogtown: The Politics of Policing, Tiger Spirit, and …
It’s not really a surprise that Jim Jarmusch has won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival for Father Mother Sister Brother. He has always been a major filmmaker working in a minor key, and here we have another one of his portmanteau films, this time three thematically …
The Swiss-Canadian director, Peter Mettler, is a respected documentary filmmaker. Focusing on exploring the miracles of existence, his films observe the environment surrounding human beings. In this sense, he tends to release long films that meditate on the humane reality. His career spans four decades, featuring celebrated films like Picture …
There is a needle drop in Mother so insane that it either singlehandedly turns the movie into a triumph or ruins it completely, and I still can’t decide which it is. But this is precisely the point director Teona Strugar Mitevska is trying to make with her fictionalised biopic of …
Rainn Wilson’s comedy chops are what he is most well-known for, but he has a much wider range than just playing for laughs. In his latest film, Code 3, from director Christopher Leone, Wilson shows that range well. This dramedy, which examines a day in the life of a paramedic, offers us …
Every episode of House of Guinness, Steven Knight’s newest television creation for Netflix, begins with a disclaimer and promise: “This fiction is inspired by true stories”. While based on many real people and events of 1860s Dublin (and further afield), House of Guinness is first and foremost concerned with being …
It is so hard to figure out how other people think that a movie like Silent Friend, which lays it all out step by step, is just so incredibly cool. The fact that it is hooked onto a real tree in a real place – an enormous ginkgo tree in …
Benedetta Porcaroli won the Best Actress prize in the Orrizonti strands of the Venice Film Festival simply because this ridiculous movie would not have been possible without her spectacular performance. The Kidnapping of Arabella (Il rapimento di Arabella) does indeed involve a kidnapping but one in which we are not …
In 2023, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) released a list of the fifty greatest Canadian films ever. At the top of the list, it was not the name of David Cronenberg, Sarah Polley, Jean-Marc Vallée, or Atom Egoyan. It was Zacharias Kunuk with his historical 2001 film, Atanarjuat: The Fast …
Director Maryam Touzani, who co-wrote Calle Málaga with Nabil Ayouch, starts extremely strongly with this tale of an elderly woman finally making her own choices in life, but loses the courage of her convictions. This is ironic as this is very much a story of how you cannot have your …
There’s no doubt that manga is becoming one of the most popular art forms in the world. Initially, manga became famous in certain parts of Asia due to its storytelling and brilliant illustrations. Soon, it started to gain popularity in Western countries. The rise of Manga made filmmakers realize that …
After solving not one, not two, but three murders you would think that the Thursday Murder Club would deserve a little break. But there’s no rest for the wicked, and when an old friend of Elizabeth’s shows up needing help, the rest of the club gets drawn right in. Before …
We don’t choose our family. Love them, hate them, they are our families, and we are stuck with them. Some of us are blessed with living, supportive ones; others not so much, and the rest fall somewhere in between. Black Rabbit is a story of brothers who fall somewhere in …
There’s never an easy way to tackle a real-life story or a story based on real-life events. The audience would go into the theaters or log in to their streaming platforms, expecting they would see something riveting. However, it’s not that easy, and filmmakers need to follow certain rules if …
Cotton Queen is the debut film of Russian-Sudanese writer-director Suzannah Mirghani and very clearly made for an international audience. The establishing shots of laughing teenager cotton workers watching Tiktoks make sure, even if we know nothing about Sudan, we know it’s firmly in the now. And while it is Sudanese …
Comedian Mae Martin’s (Feel Good) first venture into drama is a confused exploration of a dysfunctional town with a mysterious school. What has the potential to be a Lynchian mystery falls flat as it struggles to combine two perspectives. Told through two separate viewpoints, Wayward follows cop Alex Dempsey (Martin) …
Few national authors have the same clout and immediate recognisability as Scottish author Irvine Welsh. Paul Sng’s documentary Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough – co-written by Sng and Welsh – opens with a laundry list of ways Welsh and his work, definitions of national treasures, has reached adoring audiences …
Of all the hype bubbles that form around the first reactions to a new release, One Battle After Another generated some of the most effusive of this century. And I mean that almost literally, since many of those reactions contained the pull-quote-ready taglines that marketing departments love so much — …
Ron Howard is one of the most prolific directors working today. His films, like Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind, have stood the test of time. Whereas even with those winners, Howard has delivered misfires like In The Heart of The Sea and Hillbilly Elegy. It’s a varied career that, …