Reviews
| Complete List (Total: 303) | ||
| Year | Star Rating | Title |
| 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 |
**** *** 1/2 *** ** 1/2 ** * 1/2 * 1/2 * Zero Stars |
# – C D – F G – I J – L M – O P – R S – V W – Z |
Articles
Shelf Life: Movies on Repeat – April 23, 2011
I’m watching “Ghostbusters” for maybe the 15th time. Bill Murray is rounding the corner of the hotel hallway where he’ll inevitably run into Slimer, feasting from a cart of food, pouring bowls of it into his green gooey gullet. The shot switches back to Murray, who pulls his walkie-talkie from his hip without changing his expression. “Come in, Ray,” he says into the speaker, delivering the words like a chronic joker discovering how serious things can get…
Alan Arkin: An Improvised Life – March 20, 2011
Alan Arkin has a bit role as a kindly police captain in “So I Married An Axe Murderer.” In that film, Anthony LaPaglia plays a cop who lusts for big, flashy, violent police chases. He’d settle for having a chief who was a little rougher around the edges, more like the chiefs on television. “Why can’t you be like the captain on ‘Starsky and Hutch’?” LaPaglia’s character whines. “You know, when you come in, and you haul me into your office, and you bawl me out because you’re sick and tired of defending my screwball antics to the commissioner?”…
The 83rd Annual Oscar Walk of Shame – February 28, 2011
Criticisms were hurled up and down at this year’s broadcast of the 83rd Annual Academy Awards, though Oscar columns are a dime a dozen these days, and it’s hard to imagine a day will come when a broadcast is met with universal acclaim. Shortly after the show ended, Roger Ebert declared it “Dead. In. The. Water.” – pretty harsh, what with the excess periods…
Ten Great Films from 2010 – January 24, 2011
2010 was not a terrific year for big American box office fare quality wise, but there was plenty happening at the subsidiary, independent, and international levels. With the Oscar nominations list going up tomorrow, I thought I’d share a few thoughts on 10 of the best films I saw this past year, presented in alphanumeric order…
Black, White, and Red All Over – October 20, 2010
I’ve spent the last nine-and-a-half years convinced that when I came across the White Stripes for the first time, they were playing “I Think I Smell a Rat” on “The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn,” their first-ever television appearance. YouTube wasn’t around back then. Turns out it was a song called “Screwdriver” from their first record, mixed with a little bit of Blind Willie McTell’s “Your Southern Can is Mine,” covered on their second…
Fantasia Has No Boundaries – August 31, 2010
“The NeverEnding Story” may have been the first film I saw in a cinema. Who remembers? The memory stamp includes moving through an aisle of seats at the old Centre twin theatre on George Street in Peterborough. Was it the first time I’d seen it, or had the Centre been re-running it for parents desperate to keep their kids occupied?…
The Old York – August 18, 2010
The Raja Cinema was one of the first buildings on Commercial Drive I laid eyes on during my search for an apartment here in town. It sits, peeling and empty, at the end of my block. Abandoned theatres bring to mind all kinds of assumptions. The dilapidated Raja comes across as a joint that screened porno and exploitation flicks toward the end of its run before repeated raids finally forced it into giving up the ghost…
The “Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter” Guide to Ottawa – July 14, 2010
The image of a lesbian vampire graced the cover of the first copy of the Xpress I ever laid eyes on. Back in 2001, I was new in town and had yet to set foot inside the Mayfair Theatre, the Bytowne Cinema, or the Library and Archives Canada auditorium – the holy trinity of independent and art cinemas in Ottawa…
Bursting the Bubble: “waydowntown” Turns 10 – May 18, 2010
My first office job was at Filament Communications, a multimedia company in Ottawa where I worked for a whole six weeks before I was informed that the company was going under. I had just moved to the city after completing a diploma program in multimedia design and was exhilarated with the experience of my first steps into the adult world. I was 21 and thought I’d never have to work a McJob again…
What Mad Pursuit – April 23, 2010
It was “Ode on a Grecian Urn” that did it. In the fall of 2002, I sat in Professor Kevin Gildea’s class, listening to the man lecture on 20th century literature, delivering mash-ups of Descartes, Derrida, Freud and Keats to show exactly why so many people have always thought it necessary to tell stories…
Why I Hate Films: A Declaration of War – March 2, 2010
Allow me to voice an opinion about the future of film criticism: It will become a war on trash waged more fiercely than ever. Reviews will need to strike like nuclear bombs, carried forward in camouflaged assaults that no studio radar will identify. It will be a war of consensus, fought by brothers and sisters in arms with the latest in high-tech word weaponry, long after the Paulettes and Sarrisites have reconciled their differences to face a common enemy…
What About Peter F**king Capaldi? – February 2, 2010
The 82nd Annual Academy Awards will be the first Oscars ceremony of my tenure as a film critic (or reviewer, or blogger, or hack). When I started reviewing films last year, I had been looking forward to editorializing my heart out on Oscar season, but I’ve come to realize that there are probably too many voices on the subject as it is (and too many opening paragraphs that call attention to that fact)…
For the Love of Criticism – January 24, 2010
There was no lineup to get in to the Canadian Film Institute’s screening of Gerald Peary’s “For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism” on Saturday night, and about eight people were in the crowd. No one cares about film critics. We aren’t that interesting. I include myself as part of that group, though a lot of professional film critics wouldn’t have me. To those critics, I’m a blogger. They’re right, too…
I Want to Be Alone – January 12, 2010
Greta Garbo turned 36 the year her final film, “Two-Faced Woman,” was produced in 1941. Apart from some screentests shot later that decade, the actress never again set foot in front of a camera and voluntarily faded out of the public eye. In 1953, she purchased a luxurious apartment at 450 East 52nd Street in New York City and lived in seclusion, refusing all additional film roles and interviews, no matter how lucrative…
Eric Bogosian’s Heart Attack – November 25, 2009 (for (Cult)ure Magazine)
With a slew of award-winning plays, novels, and solo shows under his belt, Eric Bogosian is a modern creative renaissance man. In the 1988 Oliver Stone-helmed adaptation of Bogosian’s Pulitzer Prize nominated off-Broadway play Talk Radio, the young writer/actor delivered one of the greatest performances in the history of cinema. Now, more than twenty years later, he explores the dark side of a fully-grown artist’s attitude toward success and artistic growth in his recently released novel Perforated Heart…
In the Beginning – November 23, 2009
My first film. It’s hard to narrow it down. I have to go by the year. I have to remember being in the living room of my family’s house on Humber Road. It’s the early 1980′s, but I don’t remember how early. I remember teaching myself how to use the television remote control, how to read the TV guide. I remember the way the big floor model TV set looked when I turned it off, watching the picture shrink to a line and then a dot before disappearing completely. My parents owned a Betamax machine. My sisters and I are watching “Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure” on a Beta tape…
Festival Coverage
2010
Vancouver International Film Festival
Previews: “Altitude,” “Microphone.”
Canadian comic book artist Kaare Andrews brings his love of the fantastic to this Canuck actioner about five friends who fly into a twisted, midair Bermuda Triangle of a storm cloud on their way to Montreal for a Coldplay concert…
Calling “My Film and My Story” a mixed bag would be generous. Its seven directors, all film students from Konkuk University in South Korea, do nothing to distinguish their stylistic approaches across seven “Paris, Je T’aime”-style cross-stories…
The “Cities on Speed” series of films, commissioned by the Danish Film Institute, offers different examinations of international urban development. Dalsgaard’s look at Bogotá focuses on two of the city’s recent mayors, characterized by their honesty and atypical mindsets…
Previews: “Kinshasa Symphony,” “The Red Chapel,” “Of Love and Other Demons.”
There’s a drastic contrast between the derelict streets of Kinshasa – the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo – and the notes that carry from the cellos and violins bowed on its litter-strewn smoky corners. Those working the strings, members of the local orchestra, are practising for the biggest local concert the city has ever seen…
Previews: “12 Angry Lebanese,” “City of Life,” “Checkpoint Rock: Songs from Palestine.”
Director Zeina Daccache is an amazing woman. It takes guts to organize a project like the one captured in “12 Angry Lebanese,” let alone turn it into a riveting documentary after the fact. Daccache enters the overcrowded Roumieh Prison in Lebanon with aims of applying “drama therapy” to a select group of about 40 inmates…
Previews: “The White Meadows,” “Hunky Blues: The American Dream.”
Writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof is one among many Iranian artists who have been jailed for their political positions and outcries against censorship and human rights abuses. His “White Meadows” is an allegory of such abuses; a man in a rowboat navigates the salty Lake Urmia and its islands, here inhabited by people who engage in questionable rituals and ceremonies concerning death, marriage, and punishment…
Previews: “Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields,” “Anton Chekhov’s The Duel.”
There’s one moment in “Strange Powers” when Stephin Merritt’s attitude delivers pretty big laughs. The Magnetic Fields’ songwriter and frontman is being interviewed on “Good Day Atlanta” for his work on the “Lemony Snicket” soundtrack, and Merritt obviously has no patience for the host’s exaggerated ebullience…
Russian animator Garri Bardin’s adaptation of “The Ugly Duckling” went through several years of production, and the end result is an often funny, inventive, and heartfelt take on the Hans Christian Anderson tale. With its observations about nation-state (make that nation-coop) conformity mingling with the young swan’s simplistic and earnest desire to find his place in the world, it plays as a E.B. White-penned musical version of “Animal Farm.”…
2009
Ottawa International Animation Festival
Ottawa International Animation Festival: Part Four
“Mary and Max”, “$9.99″: I committed to not rating any of the films I saw at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, electing instead to simply watch the films and take in their merits over their faults. I made this decision in order to get at the heart of what the festival is trying to achieve, which is a showcase of extraordinary, unique talent from around the world. All of the work I have seen looks incredibly painstaking. One doesn’t animate a film as simply as one points a camera and shoots. These filmmakers have put outstanding efforts into what they are attempting to accomplish, part of which is to convince others that their stories can be told no other way…
Ottawa International Animation Festival: Part Three
David Silverman, “Coraline”: After getting up early to see “Where the Wild Things Are” at South Keys I made my way back downtown and got on a shuttle headed for the Museum of Civilization, where I was promptly far too early to see writer/director David Silverman in conversation as part of the Ottawa International Animation Festival. In addition to co-directing Pixar’s “Monsters Inc.” and Dreamworks’ “The Road to El Dorado”, Silverman is best known for his directorial work on “The Simpsons”, where he has 23 episodes to his credit in addition to “The Simpsons Movie”…
Ottawa International Animation Festival: Part Two
“Edison and Leo”: Now that I’ve seen a stop-motion animated character sport a woody, I’m wondering how I might otherwise be surprised as the Ottawa International Animation Festival continues. I caught Neil Burns’ “Edison and Leo” at the Rideau Centre showing. It’s Canada’s first stop-motion feature film and it’s a doozy. It also further demonstrates the point that this isn’t kid-friendly fare being screened…
Ottawa International Animation Festival: Part One
“Life Without Gabriella Ferri,” “Entering the Mind Through the Mouth”: Partway through Jin Sung Choi’s “Entering the Mind Through the Mouth”, the animated short that opened Priit and Olga Pärn’s “Life Without Gabriella Ferri”, I began to rethink my strategy for covering the Ottawa International Animation Festival. My original plan was to attend all seven feature length films contending for the jury prize. I had my schedule all worked out. I was excited to dive into my first film festival. But then it struck me – animation is some pretty heavy stuff. I didn’t even know I was going to be watching Choi’s short, which would be worthy of a column alone, let alone the Pärns’ work and “Mai Mai Miracle” later on the same night…
