Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2014: The Missing Picture Review

The Missing Picture Nominated this year for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars (but strangely not for Best Documentary, where it also could have been a contender) and winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes last year, Rithy Panh’s multimedia look at the devastation caused by the Khmer Rouge during the Kampuchea Revolution […]

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2014: Highway of Tears Review

Highway of Tears Aside from the victims of high profile serial killer trial of Robert Pickton, more than 40 women and possibly hundreds more have gone missing along the tragically monikered Highway of Tears in Vancouver. Home to a large First Nations population still scarred from years of residential schooling abuse and a constantly acrimonious […]

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2014: Big Men Review

Big Men “Everyone has the desire and drive to be well off in life,” or so says one of the subjects of Rachel Boynton’s fascinating, frightening, and multi-faceted look at the often corruptible and highly lucrative African oil trade. It’s a line said by a savvy investor who thinks he’s “movin’ on up like The […]

Solo Review

The Canadian thriller Solo lives up to its modest title and supplies no more and no less than what’s needed to be effective. A stripped down killer-on-the-loose yarn and survival narrative, first time feature filmmaker Isaac Cravit has crafted a taut, beautifully shot, and well performed reworking of genre formula.

Stalingrad Review

Stalingrad is essentially the Russian equivalent of Pearl Harbor in terms of both historical context and as a kind of appropriate comparison between this box office hit in its home country and a sort of North American counterpart. It's a serious battle with stunning sequences that can't realize how silly of a movie it is.

Non-Stop Review

Non-Stop is great. It’s not great in the way that a traditional award winning kind of film should be great, but it’s a near perfect bit of action entertainment that solidifies Liam Neeson’s status as one of the best leading men the genre has ever had.

The Dork Shelf Guide to the Toronto Irish Film Festival

We take an overview of this year's Toronto Irish Film Festival (starting this Friday and running through Sunday at the TIFF Bell Lightbox) and review the delightful opening night documentary The Irish Pub and the not so delightful indie drama Made in Belfast.

Public Hearing Review

Blending the experimental filmmaking with a degree of detail oriented accuracy that Frederick Wiseman would appreciate, the black and white docudrama Public Hearing (screening for free this Thursday at 9:15pm at Toronto’s Revue Cinema as part of the ReFocus screening series) is exactly what it says on the tin and so much more bubbling under the surface.

True Detective Episode 1.6 Recap

For the first time in True Detective’s run we have been left with an image, burdened with a heavy past, moving toward a future not known by anyone inside the show’s delicate clockwork collage. It’s no longer a matter of whodunit, it’s a matter of who’s-gonna-do-it.

3 Days to Kill Review

Alarmingly misguided, horribly directed, astoundingly racist, and insanely incomprehensible, the McG/Luc Besson/Kevin Costner team-up 3 Days to Kill best's last week's previous low water mark set by Winter's Tale as the worst major studio release of 2013 so far, leading us further down one of the worst starts to any year in film history.

Tim’s Vermeer Review

It would be easy to pithily dismiss a documentary like Tim’s Vermeer, the feature directorial debut of Teller from noted magician and pundit duo Penn and Teller, as something akin of a Mythbusters-styled lark, or even worse as a filming of a forgery. But as with the great work of art the film’s protagonist is trying to understand, there’s a far deeper meaning on scientific, emotional, and artistic levels coming into play.

Cheap Thrills Review

Dark, twisted, and emotionally disturbed in ways almost too delightful and clever to spoil, the coal black comedy Cheap Thrills certainly lives up to its name and then some thanks to clever writing and solid performances.