“I’m living,” says Ashley McKenzie, in response to the question, “What are you doing in Cape Breton?” Last year the award-winning filmmaker–her short drama Rhonda’s Party received a host of accolades, including the CBC Short Film Faceoff in 2011–moved from Halifax back to her hometown of New Waterford in order to complete a new short, […]
Carsten Knox
Posted inArts + Music
Womb
Set in a permanently wintry seaside, Womb is one strange little sci-fi picture. In it, Rebecca (Eva Green) and Tommy (the current Doctor Who, Matt Smith) were childhood sweethearts who meet cute as adults. When Tommy dies in an accident, Rebecca goes to a biotech lab and recreates him; she actually gives birth to his […]
Posted inArts + Music
The Sweeney
Based on a popular UK cop show from the ’70s, The Sweeney is a slick and satisfying police thriller that doubles as a character study of the guy at the movie’s centre, Ray Winstone’s grizzled veteran cop Jack Regan. Like a team of cockney Dirty Harrys, Regan and his team use, let’s say, unorthodox measures […]
Posted inArts + Music
Headhunters
A cracking Norwegian thriller—adapted from a Jo Nesbø novel—follows the very anglo-named Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie), a corporate headhunter with a sideline in art thievery. He’s married to Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund), who he feels unworthy of, and who he suspects of infidelity with art collector Clas (Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, Jamie Lannister from Game of Thrones). […]
Posted inArts + Music
Scream queens
Local filmmaker Kristen Swinkels will go so far as to admit she hasn’t euthanized her own mother, but otherwise her film, Nigredo, is based on personal experience. The imagery sprung from visiting her mom in hospital, combined with a hefty dose of Jungian psychology. “The hospital experience is kind of crazy when you’re there for […]
Posted inArts + Music
Upside Down
One of the strangest and most visually impressive fantasy films of recent years, Upside Down is a Canadian/French co-pro about two planets existing side by side, each with its own gravitational pull. One planet exploits the other’s resources. Eden (Kirsten Dunst) from the well-off world fell in love with Adam (Jim Sturgess) from the impoverished […]
Posted inArts + Music
Why the Rush?
A lot has happened since November 2, 1987. That was the last time Canadian rock legends Rush played Halifax. The show was at the Metro Centre, with Chalk Circle opening. Rush has released eight studio albums since then. It went from the band with the screechy singer who played “Tom Sawyer,” the weird one your […]
Posted inArts + Music
The grace of God
Hawksley Workman first strode upon the Canadian music scene in the death throes of the last century, a furs-and-feather-boa swaddled, sexually ambiguous, cabaret-loving rock star, as if David Bowie and Liza Minnelli had a keening, bastard son. In recent years, though, he’s shirked much of that theatricality in both his music and performance. Now a […]
Posted inArts + Music
Stories We Tell
We begin with Margaret Atwood, Bon Iver, home movies from the 1970s and we’re totally in: Sarah Polley’s very personal documentary about her mother, her family and a secret kept between them. “You know all about it, you know it’s a delusion,” narrates the man who raised her. “It’s all done with mirrors, mate, they […]
Posted inArts + Music
Antiviral
Director Brandon “Son of David” Cronenberg is in no hurry to distance himself from the themes prevalent in his father’s work, if his debut feature Antiviral is anything to go by. This sci-fi body-horror shares cold-sweat DNA with Rabid, Videodrome and The Fly for sure. In this entirely credible world of empathy spared only for […]
Posted inArts + Music
Blackbird flies
Sean is 16 and a goth. He’s the new kid in a small-town school, where the hockey team rules the roost. When he starts to get some attention from Deanna, the girlfriend of one of those jocks, he gets bullied and lashes out the only way he can: online. When the cops come down on him […]
Posted inArts + Music
Great Danes
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions Danish movies? Could be Babette’s Feast, the foodie classic that won the 1987 Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. Could be the grinning mug of Lars von Trier, director of Melancholia, Antichrist and Dancer in the Dark, for whom the expression “enfant terrible” […]
