Divide in Concord World Showcase The hot button push to move away from the use of bottled water and towards more environmentally sustainable drinking options moves to one of America’s most historic towns in Kris Kaczor’s well meaning, but scattershot examination of a different kind of revolution. Spurred on by something her grandson told her […]
David & Me Canadian Spectrum An admirably well intentioned but highly scattershot human rights doc, it feels bad ragging on this story of a friendship between a man in Toronto and a wrongfully convicted Brooklyn inmate, but there’s just too little focus to sustain even 70 minutes. Ray Klonsky is a reformed fake thug kid […]
Demonstration Special Presentations A well meaning, but utterly failed experiment to create a “doc ballet,” Demonstration has been culled together from the footage of 32 student filmographers in the Master of Creative Documentary Program at Pompeu Fabra University under the guidance of Russian documentarian Victor Kossakovsky. On March 29th, 2012, thousands of protestors in Barcelona […]
The Darkside Mystery, Myth, and Legend If nothing else, Warwick Thornton’s documentary The Darkside is certainly an original concept. Over many months Thornton collected a series of ghost stories from a variety of sources across Australia then shot first person retellings of the best ones along with re-enactments from local actors. The 13 stories depicted […]
Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart Special Presentations Pamela Smart’s sensationalistic 1991 trial involving a high school employee who not only slept with a student, but talked that student into murdering her husband was an instant pop culture phenomenon. It was the first trial ever broadcast live on television and was eventually turned into a […]
Bintou World Showcase Hard at work in her sewing room in Burkina Faso and worlds away from the high fashion runways of Europe, Bintou runs a successful dressmaking business. She works night and day whipping up outfits for white ex-pats who never haggle at her prices as she travels door to door on her bicycle. […]
Art and Craft Nightvision A wildly different and highly amusing kind of cat and mouse film, Art and Craft follows the overlapping timelines of a not so dangerous, but assuredly deceitful art forger and one overly obsessive investigator and former registrar that’s determined to take him down. Quiet, unassuming, and mentally challenged Mark Landis from […]
Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case Made in Denmark A fleet and funny look at a man under house arrest who has been deemed the most influential artist in the world, Andreas Johnsen’s look at the post-arrest and home imprisonment life of Chinese firebrand Ai Weiwei serves as a near perfect follow up to Alison Klayman’s […]
Advanced Style Next The rare example of a fashion based documentary that doesn’t wallow in privilege or ageism, Advanced Style looks at the subjects of street style photographer Ari Seth Cohen’s blog devoted to stylish women over the age of 50. It isn’t particularly deep (most fashion docs aren’t), but the women being profiled are […]
Absences World Showcase The latest from award winning Canadian filmmaker Carole Laganière concerns the holes left by the various departures of others in our lives. Framed by Laganière’s own experience dealing with her mother’s Alzheimer’s and having to watch a loved one slip away before her eyes, she extends the definition of absence a bit […]
112 Weddings Love, Factually 112 Weddings is misleading in a number of ways, none of them favourable. A personal experiment from long time wedding videographer turned documentary filmmaker Doug Block, 112 Weddings doesn’t examine that many matrimonial ceremonies. It’s just the total career count of wedding videos Block has been commissioned to make as of […]
The season two premiere of Orphan Black picks up seconds after Sarah discovered her house had been ransacked and her daughter Kira and Mrs. S. had gone missing. We find our main girl running for dear life in the rain, trying desperately to evade an enemy that at the moment could be the police, the Neolutionists, or the Proletheans.
In “Su-Zakana” the cocoon constructed of mystery novel pages, fond pop-culture memories, Hollywood disappointments, and countless other symbols that once encased Hannibal has cracked open, and out of it has come a new and unpredictable kind of butterfly.
It’s been a busy week with all of us gearing up for our massive Hot Docs coverage, but here’s a look at what else is playing on local screens this week that we haven’t gotten around to reviewing yet, including the Disneynature documentary Bears, the romantic drama The Face of Love, the Canadian teen road flick Hold Fast, the psychological thriller Stress Position, the literary minded Meetings with a Young Poet, and the ballet documentary Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq.
Transcendence is so universally awful and painful to sit through that it becomes the rare kind of film where partway through you keep questioning if it’s worse than other similarly abysmal misfires.
