Indie movie Good Dick (set in a video store? Check! Super-edgy title? Meh. Dick and Pecker did it adjective-free) starts by exploring a question most current/former video-store employees can relate to: what’s the best way to interact with porn-renters? Do you avoid eye contact? Amp up the politeness? Or, like Good Dick‘s hero (Jason Ritter), […]
Lindsay McCarney
Posted inArts + Music
Trouble the Water
I watched the Hurricane Katrina documentary Trouble the Water the night of Hurricane Bill. On screen, water engulfed houses and stop signs; I gathered flashlights, feeling like a wimp. The doc follows Kimberly Roberts, a street hustler/aspiring rapper left stranded in New Orleans as Katrina hits. Roberts picks up a camera. Through her footage and […]
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Tyson
“I attacked him…in front of these old decrepit white women…I just attacked him and stomped him,” shares Mike Tyson in Tyson, James Toback’s weirdly sympathetic documentary, told entirely in the boxer’s own words. Sure, the guy Tyson “stomped” is Don King. But the matter-of-fact way Tyson describes publicly beating a man before a host of […]
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I.O.U.S.A.
Patrick Creadon’s last feature-length documentary was Wordplay—a zippy film that followed the math-inclined word-savants who love, create and competitively solve crossword puzzles. Apparently, Creadon decided it was a good idea to follow up Wordplay‘s low-stakes fun by scaring the crap out of people. Enter I.O.U.S.A., a terrifying look at the United States’ mountainous debt problems—most […]
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Angel of Death
Running 40 minutes late to a screening-party for the Ed Brubaker-penned webseries Angel of Death? No worries: at 43:28, two characters clunkily recap AOD‘s plot. Everyone’s worried badass assassin Eve (Zoe Bell) has a newly developed conscience and is coming after her assassin bosses. One assassin chum assures another that “Eve doesn’t see the world […]
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Outsourced
Don’t let the faux-hand-lettering fool you, Juno-naysayers: Outsourced isn’t the “quirky” indie drama its cover implies. Instead, it’s a formulaic fish-out-water tale. (If you’re going to pooh-pooh something, pooh-pooh fairly.) Here, our uncomfortable fish is Todd (Josh Hamilton), an American kitsch salesman sent to train a call-centre full of lower-cost labourers in India, after his […]
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Let’s Make Money
The cover for Austrian documentary Let’s Make Money calls the film “a must-see primer for understanding the global financial crisis.” That description’s somewhat disingenuous; Let's Make Money bandies about poorly defined terms like “protectionism” and “private equity” too liberally to be considered an accessible intro. (Track down the Peabody-winning This American Life episode “The Giant […]
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One Week
When English teacher/frustrated novelist Ben (Joshua Jackson) learns he’s suffering from stage-four cancer, he does what any self-respecting movie flake would: he buys a motorcycle, casts off his boring life and sets out for adventure—looking to “embrace randomness” and “searching for moments.” On his road trip, he has the quintessential Canadian experience—or at least the […]
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Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
You won’t make it through Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father without crying. Sure, director Kurt Kuenne’s tribute to his murdered friend, Andrew, has its flaws. Kuenne uses some cheap editing cuts and lobs Michael Moore-esque vitriol at public officials who mishandled the case of Shirley Turner, Andrew’s spurned ex and […]
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Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
Early on in the scripted, singing commentary track for Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon’s web-musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, actor Nathan Fillion follows up a tuneful smackdown of Neil Patrick Harris with dialogue that’s as hilarious as it is wanky. “The only question you have to ask yourself is ‘How good a Joey […]
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Nurse.Fighter.Boy
Just as the film’s title suggests, there’s three main characters in Canada-filmed indie flick Nurse.Fighter.Boy: beautiful Jude (Karen LeBlanc), a dying nurse who believes “the people you love never go away”; her son, Ciel (Daniel J. Gordon), who makes magic and music, worries about mom and dreams of Jamaica; and a stoic, lonely fighter (The […]
Posted inLifestyle
Hot Summer Guide: Cultural events and festivals
CATCH: The Nova Scotia Seafood Festival June 27 Get those culinary taste buds ready for a weekend of seafood: CATCH will be working overtime. The festival promises to be a weekend of tasting, learning, shopping and just generally loving all things fishy. Presented by the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, the festival’s focus is to […]