With a director more accustomed to shooting good looking and well handled action sequences, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is just a slight notch better than its predecessor, but nearly every other positive and negative from the first film remains exactly the same.
Lots to go through this week on the home entertainment front including the coal in the stocking that is the Paul Rudd/Paul Giamatti team-up All is Bright, the Blu-Ray debut of the exceptional astronaut drama The Right Stuff, John Carpenter's ill fated TV pilot Body Bags, the toothless political drama The Attack, charming Irish creature feature Grabbers, the passable Dolph Lundgren/Randy Couture drug actioner Ambushed, and the gleefully sick Canadian sleaze flick, Junkie
Screening for free tonight at Double Double Land in Toronto - courtesy of MDFF filmmakers Kazik Radwanski and Dan Montgomery - the French coming of age drama My Blue-Eyed Kid takes a thoughtful and nuanced look at youthful obsessions and the fall out from divorce. Also, a few words about the Canadian mid-range feature Fogo and the short Stray, both of which take place in the Maritimes and play as part of the evening's programming.
With a whole lot of catching up still to be done, our film and arts editor gives brief reviews of the Calvin and Hobbes documentary Dear Mr. Watterson and the teen drama Geography Club, and tells you where to check out his reviews of the British dystopian drama How I Live Now and the WWII fable The Book Thief.
After an impressive and genuinely funny first hour, The Best Man Holiday manages to turn to sour, rancid eggnog that negates any and all good will that came before it, essentially forgetting about everything that made the first film from 1999 such a pleasant surprise in the first place.
Dork Shelf looks at the first ever European Union Film Festival - a series of free films from all over Europe running from November 14th-27th at The Royal in Toronto - and gives reviews to 8 of the films screening!
The Consul of Bordeaux There is nothing particularly striking in The Consul of Bordeaux, yet the real-life story of Portuguese consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes’s efforts to help save Jews stranded in Bordeaux, France during World War II is a mostly heartwarming tale. De Sousa Mendes issued tens of thousands of visas irrespective of applicants’ […]
Dinner with My Sisters The look and feel in Dinner with My Sisters could very well belong in a Greek tourism video: shots of open fields, clear, blue skies and sleek, white architecture capture the beauty of Cyprus in this family drama, but outside of its production design the film falls short. The clunky story […]
Volare – The Great Story of Domenico Modugno A made for Italian TV look at one of the country’s most well known pop culture icons, Volare takes the name of singer Domenico Modugno’s best known worldwide hit (I think you can figure out which one) and takes a look at the life of the struggling […]
Oh Boy Although it’s a German production filled with a lot of national identity and flavour, the black and white shot, slick looking, but amateurishly mounted Oh Boy feels more like a well made university thesis project rather than a film that was actually a huge indie and mainstream hit in its home country earlier […]
Alcan Highway Hese is a 44 year-old Finnish man trying to solve the paradox of wanting to be constantly on the move and to find a home to settle down. To this end, he plans to build a mobile home and find a place to turn off the engine for good. He travels from Finland […]
Dream Team 1935 The rare example of a sports drama not from North America, Dream Team 1935 is the true story of a small nation succeeding on the world stage when no one gave them a chance. In Geneva, Switzerland in 1935 the first European Championship in basketball is about to take place. The national […]
Love.net Love.net follows the parallel stories of character trying to change their lives via Internet dating sites in Bulgaria. This film is about love at first (virtual) sight in all its forms – the inevitable, mystic and inexplicable love, as well as the superficial. The film tracks multiple couples trying to make their first forays […]
Kuma Fatma is a fiftysomething housewife with six children in Vienna, but she grew up in Turkey and clings stubbornly to the traditions and values of the old country. Ayse is 19, and married to Fatma’s son, Hasan. However, when the family takes Ayse to Vienna this is revealed as a charade… for Ayse is […]
As our film editor continues to play catch up after a crazy couple of weeks for new releases, he takes a look at the Canadian drama All the Wrong Reasons (co-starring the late Cory Monteith) and the heavily talked about French romance Blue is the Warmest Color. The movies might be vastly different, but his opinion is the same on both: They're just okay.
