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, […]
Film + TV
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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 […]
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TIFF Day 5 & 6
Finally I can say I’ve seen Room, probably the festival’s favourite and a Canadian co-production of all things. Starring Brie Larson as a woman who was kidnapped at 17 and has been kept in a 10 x 10 shed for seven years as a mostly unseen man’s sex slave. The son from that union is […]
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North Mountain goes in a new direction
North Mountain Premiere Wednesday, September 23, 9:15pm Park Lane Cinema, 5657 Spring Garden Road $11.25 Bretten Hannam shot his first feature film, North Mountain, over 13 days in January down near Kejimkujik—the Mersey River and Caledonia area, not too far from where he grew up in the Annapolis Valley. It was brutally cold. “We finished […]
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Money Talks: local features at the Atlantic Film Fest
Tonight, the 35th Atlantic Film Festival kicks off with the premiere of Hyena Road, the new Paul Gross–Allan Hawco joint about Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan (7pm, Rebecca Cohn). There are a number of internationally acclaimed films and shorts screening in the next eight days, but there are also great batch of Atlantic-made features that show just how skilled […]
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TIFF Day 3 & 4
The Australian director Gillian Armstrong—lady directors are nearly a casual occurrence here, it’s great—presents an odd hybrid of documentary with Women He’s Undressed, about the openly gay costume designer Orry-Kelly, who won multiple Oscars in the Golden Age (including for Some Like it Hot and An American in Paris) and banged Cary Grant when he […]
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TIFF Day 1 & 2
Always happy to be back for a week at Toronto’s Scotiabank Theatre, looming above John Street with its escalator to the sky and wildly variant air-conditioning levels. Catherine Hardwicke came out swinging with 2003’s thirteen, a gritty coming-of-age story starring Evan Rachel Wood and Nikki Reed that went from Sundance sensation to Academy Award nomination […]
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Speed racer
“It feels like a kid just dumped its toys into a sandbox,” says Jason Eisener of this summer’s most enduring hit, Mad Max: Fury Road. “And Turbo Kid felt like someone dumped their toys into a sandbox—and there were toys from Masters of the Universe, GI Joe and Jem and the Holograms.” Eisener, away from […]
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Review: American Ultra
In the genre mash-up American Ultra, Mike (Jesse Eisenberg) is a stoner burnout living in West Virginia with his girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart). He knows she’s too good for him, or as he says, “We’re the perfect fucked-up couple. She’s perfect, I’m the fuck-up.” What he does know is he’s actually a CIA asset, which […]
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Meow Flicks
There’s something unusual going down at the Citadel on Caturday. Now in its second year, The Just For Cats Film Festival will transform the Citadel’s fortress into an outdoor theatre and screen the “greatest hits” of viral cat videos on a giant pop-up screen–expect some furr-miliar faces like Lil Bub and Keyboard Cat. The entertainment […]
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Review: The Diary of A Teenage Girl
The brash, R-rated cousin to the summer’s other wonderful coming-of-age story, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, The Diary of a Teenage Girl follows teenager Minnie Goetze through an auspicious sexual awakening atop the hills of San Francisco in the 1970s. Completely of her own accord, Minnie (Bel Powley, a terrific UK find) decides […]
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Review: Shaun the Sheep
The team at Aardman is back with Shaun the Sheep, another endlessly delightful animal romp based on the 2007 television series. Written and directed by Mark Burton and Richard Starzak, it’s a bunch of cute, Claymated mishaps as farm kid Shaun tries to chill in the big city, only to have The Farmer end up […]