A Girl on Girls: Episode 3.4 Recap

This week's episode of Girls starts off with Hannah tripping and spilling the entire contents of her purse, because she’s now either Carrie Bradshaw in that one Paris episode of Sex and the City or every rom-com protagonist ever. She’s klutzy! She’s lovable! She’s Hannah Horvath! But seriously, it was great to have a unified theme for this episode just to see how each character related to the topic of death.

True Detective Episode 1.3 Recap

This week’s installment of True Detective certainly saves its two biggest developments for the end (including one heck of a cliffhanger) and does a great job of casting doubt upon Marty and Rust’s abilities to do their jobs effectively.

Community Episode 5.5 Recap

An episode in which we see how Community can take something as cartoonish as a 22-minute game of hot lava and craft it into a strong and emotional story about how shitty saying goodbye to a friend can be.

I, Frankenstein Review

I, Frankenstein is far better than it really has any right to be on a surface level. It’s gleefully attuned to how silly its premise is and not aiming to do anything else than be supremely entertaining.

After the Dark Review

I think the great scholar (and cinematic philosopher in his own right) Roger Ebert said it best when he said: “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.”

The Selfish Giant Review

Fictionalized small town poverty has rarely ever felt as visceral and multifaceted as it does in Clio Barnard’s Northern England set coming of age drama The Selfish Giant.

Ice Soldiers Review

The dull, lifeless Canadian action thriller Ice Soldiers concerns a trio of recently thawed out indestructible super soldiers being reanimated, but since the film around them never comes to life it just seems like the only thing that was thawed out from long ago was the freezer burned screenplay.

This Week at The Bloor: 1/24/14

Another solid week at The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema brings a look at an offbeat Icelandic museum in The Final Member, the rise of one of basketball's most recent superstars in Linsanity, a screening of one of the best rock concert films of all time (Stop Making Sense), and a very special tribute and fundraiser for recently passed documentary icon Peter Wintonick.

Mourning Has Broken Review

In the low key, touching, and darkly funny microbudget indie Mourning Has Broken – produced by Jason and Brett Butler for only $1,000 – a nameless man (played by Robert Nolan) goes about his daily routine angry at the world around him, but it's the film's unpredictable nature that keeps things moving nicely.

The Past Review

Asghar Farhadi’s Iranian melodrama The Past is pretty much everything that made his previous film, the Oscar nominated and genuinely excellent A Separation, a success except amplified, blown up and drawn out, which means it’s ultimately less successful.

Devil’s Knot Review

Atom Egoyan’s dramatized take on the events surrounding the West Memphis Three murder case and trial, Devil’s Knot, is a tad too redundant and tasteful for its own good.

Whitewash Review

Whitewash is an ambitious, if decidedly problematic debut Canadian feature that’s arriving in theatres at the perfect time.

A Girl on Girls: Episode 3.3 Recap

Girls consistently places its characters in dark and amusing situations that make us reflect on our own terrible choices and awkward experiences. At the end of the day, however, a lack of character growth and self-awareness will exhaust even the most loyal fan. To combat this, Dunham and co. have transformed several of the show's supporting characters into surrogates for the viewer who confront the main characters about their behaviour.

True Detective Episode 1.2 Recap

By the close of the second episode of HBO’s True Detective, it seems like the stinger to each installment will be to remind the audience that there’s an actual overarching case that needs to be solved and not just an almost painfully intimate portrait of two men that are slowly breaking down. Then again, “Seeing Things” tends to suggest that the very case and how it ultimately turns out will ultimately come down to the personalities of the people trying to solve it rather than the particulars.