Faces, Places Friday, February 16, 7pm & 9pm Carbon Arc Cinema, 1737 Summer Street $8.75 carbonarc.ca The great French filmmaker Agnès Varda combines forces with the street artist J.R. in Faces, Places, a unique and fascinating documentary that follows the pair around the countryside talking to people and creating building-sized portraits of them on giant […]
Film Review
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Film review: Call Me By Your Name
As is usual, Call Me By Your Name arrives in Halifax after nearly five months of rapturous response, beginning on the festival circuit in September, paralyzing gay Twitter in December and losing all of its Golden Globes last week. (Advice to men: Try not to make an awards bid when Daniel Day-Lewis is out here, […]
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Film review: My Friend Dahmer
My Friend Dahmer is disturbing from the beginning, probably because we already know the subject’s destiny. The film is based on a graphic novel of the same name, in which John “Derf” Backderf (played by Alex Wolff in the adaptation) recounts his high school friendship with soon-to-be rapist, serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. Former […]
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Florence Pugh nails it in Lady MacBeth
Lady Macbeth has long been a go-to scapegoat descriptor for a manipulative woman, a crazy bitch with a sexual and/or emotional hold over her man, using him to do her dirty work. Once considered flaws of character; in 2017 Lady Macbeth is an aspirational hero. Our eponymous lady is Katherine (Florence Pugh), barely out of […]
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Ingrid Goes West continues Aubrey Plaza’s summer of weirdness
Aubrey Plaza continues her summer of weirdness, following up July’s improvised convent romp The Little Hours with the very black comedy Ingrid Goes West. Plaza’s Ingrid is depicted as insane from the outset—the opening scene sees her pepper-spraying a bride after not being invited to the wedding and we soon find out they barely knew […]
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Review: Landline
Writer-director Gillian Robespierre reunites with muse Jenny Slate two summers after their sleeper hit abortion comedy Obvious Child to create Landline, a ’90s-set family drama that retains much of their first film’s casual sexuality, intimate connections and bursts of ribald comedy, to mostly the same success. Slate is Dana, a New Yorker in a long-term […]
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Spider-Man: Homecoming is effervescent, witty and fun
The third time is actually the charm for Spider-Man, which has five bad movies to its name in a bizarre, expensive and long-running attempt to turn this cartoon into a high-quality living thing. Andrew Garfield was in his 30s as Peter Parker; Tobey Maguire was 26 when he started this whole mess off in 2002. […]
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Beatriz at Dinner: deeper than it looks
Beatriz at Dinner has the hallmarks of a typical Sundance feature: Goats as pets; Chloe Sevigny; a very attractive actor—in this case, Salma Hayek—saddled with bad bangs in an attempt to make her look “regular;” a Duplass brother (Jay) and underwater dream sequences. It’s a lot. But it was written by Mike White—he of the […]
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20th Century Women is eminently watchable
In 2010, Mike Mills put part of his life story to screen—the part where his elderly father came out as gay. That lovely, delicate movie, Beginners, won an Oscar for Christopher Plummer. With 20th Century Women, Mills has created an ode to his mother and cast her in Annette Bening’s image (what a privilege). It’s […]
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The best movies of 2016
10. Ghostbusters Watching Kate McKinnon, a gleefully queer woman, become a movie star live in front of our eyes was an honour and a privilege. 9. The Shallows Blake Lively, third-best Travelling Pant, single-handedly carries what could’ve been a monumentally stupid B-movie to absolute triumph. 8. American Honey Andrea Arnold’s meandering, tense piece about a […]
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Review: Grandma
In Paul Weitz’s slice-of-life dramedy Grandma, Lily Tomlin is Elle, a cranky poet trying to scrape together $630 for her granddaughter Sage’s (Julia Garner) abortion. It takes place in a day but manages to glance at an entire life, beginning with Elle’s cold break-up with Olivia (Judy Greer, terrific as always; in a too-small part, […]
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Review: Black Mass
Johnny Depp, after years of compelling work in films as diverse as Benny & Joon, Ed Wood, Dead Man, Cry-Baby and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, actively crossed over into lazy sellout territory when he saidyes to Disney and started a decade-plus-long Keith Richards impressionin 2003. (His longtime cohort Tim Burton also stopped trying […]