The dependably astonishing Cynthia Nixon is Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion, the latest in Terence Davies’ exquisitely made string of costume dramas. Despite being set in the early 1900s, it has a depressing relevance: “Live as a woman for a week, Austin,” Emily spits at her brother, “and you will find it neither congenial […]
Film + TV
Posted inArts + Music
The Circle is nothing new
Emma Watson has two films in theatres right now—one has just become one of the top 10 highest-grossing films of all time, the inessential but good Beauty and the Beast remake, and this thing. The Circle, on paper, has great ingredients: Watson, Tom Hanks, Patton Oswalt, cool director (James Ponsoldt of The Spectacular Now and […]
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Anne Hathaway’s monstrous talent in Colossal
Anne Hathaway is one of our best working actors, even when the parts don’t deserve it—think of her winking poise in Tim Burton’s messy Alice in Wonderland; her relentless energy in the haggard face of Robert De Niro in The Intern; her, uh, correctly enunciated line readings in the turgid Interstellar—and she’s not been rightly challenged […]
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Review: Free Fire
The plot of Free Fire is like a Syd Field screenwriting exercise: “Set a gunfight in one room. Make it last 80 minutes. One person lives.” The options include Armie Hammer as a cocky arms dealer, Cillian Murphy as the gun-buyer, Brie Larson as The Girl, Sam Riley as a dirtbag and Enzo Cilenti as […]
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Their Finest is a dashing film-within-a-film
The Danish director Lone Scherfig returns after 2014’s sour rich boy drama The Riot Club with this dashing film-within-a-film, starring Gemma Arterton as a screenwriter hired for a propaganda film set around the battle of Dunkirk. (Note to Christopher Nolan: This is how you get women into your war movie.) The always-welcome Bill Nighy is perfectly […]
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Emerging Lens Cultural Film Festival re-emerges
7th Annual Emerging Lens Cultural Film Festival April 19-22 various locations free The Emerging Lens Cultural Film Festival has come a long way since its first year, co-founders Tara Taylor and Shelley Fashan remember. “We had one day and one sponsor in our first year,” Taylor says with a chuckle. The festival focuses on diverse, […]
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Maudie: wrongly located, but beautifully shot
Maudie, a very Nova Scotia story, was very clearly shot in Newfoundland. Only Nova Scotians will care about this. (The production moved when the film tax credit was mangled.) Maud Lewis (Sally Hawkins, excellent) lived an awful life made even worse by a terrible man (Ethan Hawke, of course), as Maudie depicts while also curiously […]
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Perfume War is inspiring and well-told
Michael Melski’s rousing documentary follows the journey of Haligonians Trevor Greene and Barb Stegemann, lifelong best friends. Greene is a soldier wounded by an axe attack in Afghanistan. Stegemann is the founder of The 7 Virtues, a fragrance company that buys its oils from farmers there, freeing them from forcibly growing poppies that eventually become heroin. […]
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Kristen Stewart waits for a ghost in Personal Shopper
So much has been written of Kristen Stewart since her Twilight era began in 2008: She slumps! She’s sullen! She looks like she hates the red carpet! Fuck her, Edward is mine! Even though she starred alongside a similarly dour, similarly slumpy man clearly just as unhappily stuck in a Hollywood-engineered romance. Even though she […]
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Jessica Chastain carries The Zookeeper’s Wife
The Zookeeper’s Wife, though it has the usual WWII hallmarks of pathological Nazi cruelty—sudden shootings, a gang rape—differs from the likes of recent violence-drunk entries like Hacksaw Ridge and Fury by focusing on the human elements rather than the awfulness (by now, nearly 80 years on, we surely know). That is due in no small part […]
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Call of the Forest: an earnest and sobering documentary
Sort of a cheerful doomsday warning, the Canadian documentary Call of the Forest offers a look at the history of trees across the world, and what man taking them away has done to the earth over time. Using the amiable Irish botanist Diana Beresford-Kroeger as a guide, Jeff McKay’s film travels to Japan, California, Ireland […]
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SYNC or swim
SYNC x StART Festival: Century Egg, Crossed Wires & Mikaylaa States Friday, March 24, 8:30pm The Bus Stop Theatre, 2203 Gottingen Street, free The Atlantic Filmmakers’ Co-operative and Forward Music Group have connected two artistic communities via SYNC, a program matching filmmakers and musicians to produce low-budget, high-resource videos. Screening as part of this weekend’s […]
