High school dramas are back with a vengeance. There’s the noir soap opera shenanigans of Archie, Betty and Veronica on Riverdale, and the sharply observed teen pathos of Thirteen Reasons Why. Both … Continue reading ‘My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea’: Dash Shaw Lands Quirky Animated Debut
You know you’ve done it. You’re breezing through Twitter, and some outrageous post pisses you off. You retweet it with a snarky comment, probably signing off with a SMH or FFS. … Continue reading Black Code dissects the internet’s social dilemma
There’s nothing quite like a David Lynch movie. You know the second you find yourself immersed in one of his unsettling worlds, the strange blend of earnest innocence and churning … Continue reading David Lynch: The Art Life
The world doesn’t need another milquetoast Canadian indie comedy. But it’s a national specialty, so they keep coming around, safe, inoffensive, government-funded and mildly amusing. Unfortunately for Chokeslam, safe and inoffensive … Continue reading Affable Chokeslam Taps Out in Quest For Rom-Com Wrestlemania
ta Remember the Arab Spring? That democratic fluorescence that erupted in late 2010 in Tunisia and spread with massive demonstrations to Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq? It was a giddy, … Continue reading ‘Tickling Giants’: Documentary Reveals Bassem Youssef’s Comedy Revolution
In October, 2014, a tourist visiting Yellowknife disappeared. Atsumi Yoshikubo seemed like a typical Japanese vacationer, visiting for the majestic creaking pines and the ethereal beauty of the northern lights. … Continue reading ‘The Missing Tourist’: Coming To Canada To Disappear
They don’t come around all that often, but the movies love a charismatically gruff old man. From the goofy classic Grumpy Old Men with Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau to Clint … Continue reading ‘A Man Called Ove’: Yet Another Grumpy Old Man, But Better Than Most
Sometimes a talent is so oversized it’s like a bomb waiting to go off. One look at ballet’s enfant terrible Sergei Polunin and you can see the talent, his mesmerizing … Continue reading ‘Dancer’: Portrait of the Artist as a Frustrating Mess
The Canadian Western has to be the smallest of film genres. Philip Borsos’ The Grey Fox (1982) pretty much begins and ends the genre. It’s small because Canadians don’t … Continue reading Maliglutit (Searchers) brings the Western to the frozen North
Well. It’s been some year, hasn’t it? Vilified and maligned, 2016 has been the honey badger of years. But even as we give it the award for zero caring, speeding onto … Continue reading Holiday Gift Guide 2016: Have Yourself a Dystopian Christmas
TIFF’s been doing a retrospective on the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. A prodigious wunderkind of the seventies German New Wave, he died of a drug overdose at 37, leaving behind … Continue reading The Matrix Preloaded: World on a Wire
Ed Gass-Donnelly’s got style and atmosphere to burn, that’s for sure. In the opening moments of his new elegiac horror-thriller Lavender, we track into a frozen tableau of police investigating a grim … Continue reading The Mixed Sense: Stylish Lavender clings to the familiar with creepy amnesiac tale
