Watching Cameraperson, the latest film by Academy Award-winning documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson, feels more like a slow walk through an art exhibit than a film. Cameraperson consists only of clips from past documentaries labeled by the location in which they were shot—the film thus remains opaque to the viewer for most[Read More…]
Film and TV
‘Logan’ is a fitting finale to the Wolverine franchise
X-Men films are a standard of the superhero genre, dating back to the first film, X-Men, in 2000. Over the course of the series, the original trilogy of films was joined by multiple spin-offs, including X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), a weird quasi-reboot that confused many fans. One of[Read More…]
Cinema du Parc gives back to the community
Cinéma du Parc is a small theatre, tucked away in the lower levels of the Galeries du Parc mall, but once in the shopping complex it is hard to miss. Its movie posters decorate the mall swalls and the delicious smell of popcorn often wafts its way up to shoppers.[Read More…]
‘Get Out’ busts the post-race myth with sharp satire
Jordan Peele, the comedian behind modern day classics such as “Key and Peele – Substitute Teacher” and “Key and Peele – East vs. West Coast Bowls,” caused a moderate stir last year when he announced that his directorial debut, entitled Get Out, would show him experimenting in the horror genre. [Read More…]
Director Pablo Larraín paints complex portrait of Chilean poet in “Neruda”
Pablo Larraín’s Neruda is an impeccably crafted film, blurring fact and fiction to create something more engaging. The film is much more than a standard biopic of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco). After the Second World War, Neruda—already an icon for his politically charged poetry advancing workers rights throughout[Read More…]
Flashback: Trainspotting exposed the underbelly of ‘90s Edinburgh
“Sometimes I think people just become junkies because they subconsciously crave ay wee bit ay silence,” is the phrase that best describes Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting (1993)—the novel that inspired the opiate-ridden 1996 movie of the same name. With the release of its sequel T2 Trainspotting on Feb. 21, Director Danny[Read More…]
Pop Dialectic: Film Reboots
End the Reboot Hollywood and content creators of all kinds have always been influenced by those that have come before them. Some of the greatest films of all time are based on previous works: The Godfather, To Kill a Mockingbird, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to name a[Read More…]
Metafiction and Bees: Joketown 16 throws the kitchen sink at comedy
In a city where everyone has a friend who dabbles in comedy, it’s sometimes hard to tell the contenders from the pretenders. But as the 16th iteration of Joketown proved on Jan. 28, sometimes the best way to separate the wheat from the chaff is pure, unadulterated competition. As part[Read More…]
“20th Century Women” presents dimensional characters in a realistic world
On Jan. 20, the eve of the Women’s March on Washington, production house A24 made a quiet announcement. The producer of some of the most notable films of the past few years—Spring Breakers, Moonlight, Under The Skin—declared that all of the opening weekend earnings of its newest film, 20th Century[Read More…]
Oscars snub some of the year’s best films
Silence Based on the 1966 Japanese novel of the same name, Silence follows two Jesuit missionaries who are sent to Japan with two missions. The first is to find Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), a priest who is believed to have committed apostasy. Second, to continue Ferreira’s work developing small Christian[Read More…]
