Olivia Thirlby is making out with a guy in an airport parking lot as they walk to his car. They met on the plane. They're wearing skinny jeans. He drives her to Silverlake. There's a vintage camera on her lap. Light-saturated shots of the passing streetscapes are interspersed. If you're not already thinking “This is some hipster shit” by the time she arrives at John Krasinski and Rosemarie DeWitt's lovely house surrounded by trees, this movie is for you.
We take a look at some of the selections for this year's thirteenth annual Planet in Focus Environmental Film festival, running this October 10th through the 14th at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox, including the opening night film Lost Rivers and the much buzzed about Future Weather.
This post Turkey day DVD release date brings us reviews for The Raven, People Like Us, Iron Sky, and the now even longer Rock of Ages.
We finish up our in-depth look at the BOND 50 Blu-ray box set this Thanksgiving with a look at the British super spy from 1982's Octopussy through to 2008's Quantum of Solace. Our film and arts editor ranks his films from best to worst at the end, and so do you with a list of our Dork Shelf readers' favourites ranked in terms of votes as to which was the best.
While the first Taken was a dirty revenge movie with a moral compass skewed beyond anything expected from Hollywood, Taken 2 is a more sanitized action feature that’s pleasures appeal primarily to those who love laughing themselves silly at the most ridiculous action fluff. Both are guilty pleasures, but this one is a little more difficult to defend. It’s not really a good movie in a traditional sense, yet it is far from boring and without trying has become the funniest action movie of the year.
Frankenweenie might be Tim Burton's best film since Edward Scissorhands and his most assuredly made since Big Fish. It's an absolute winner and a really seasonal treat from a director out to give his audience exactly what they want and expect from him.
In honour of Global James Bond Day, we take a look at the first half of the Bond 50 Blu-ray box set and take a look at the UK's biggest cinematic export from Dr. No through For Your Eyes Only.
Just in time to kick off October, we sit down with the brand new Blu-ray release of the Universal Classic Monsters Essential Collection to look at Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wold Man, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon
Tedious, flat and sentimental, Winnie attempts to tell the life story of Winnie Mandela, but it misses the nuances of the historical context and the point entirely.
Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing's documentary Detropia crafts a stunning portrait of the city of Detroit at its lowest point, but while the film is haunting, it isn't without hope or merely a document of a once great city now ravaged by poverty.
It probably doesn’t need a review or a re-evaluation of any kind (which is why this isn’t really classified as a review), so consider this a message to all of you in Toronto that Alfred Hitchcock’s wonderful Dial M for Murder will be screening at the TIFF Bell Lightbox this week in its original 3D, albeit digitally projected with a pristine 4K restoration. For those of you who don’t live in Toronto or those who want to own it, you can buy the 3D Blu-ray on October 9th. But might we persuade you, though, to go see it on the big screen?
Jet Set Radio, an extreme in-line graffiti action game, is one of the most memorable games of Sega’s final stride on their own turf. And, oh look, now it’s in HD.
This week on video store shelves we take a look at Tim Burton's Dark Shadows, The Babymakers, Sean Bean in Cleanskin, and some indie film called The Avengers.
On the evening of his appearance at the TIFF Bell Lightbox to present the third part in his Pervert's Guide to Cinema series, we take a look at the work of psychoanalyst and philosopher Slavoj Zizek and how his theories can lead to deciphering what many believe to be one of the most obtuse films of the year: Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master.
It took well over a decade for Stephen Chbosky’s seminal 1990s set young adult novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower to come to life on the big screen, and having the book’s author write and direct the finished version works quite well on an emotional level, but not entirely in terms of filmmaking. Those with fond memories of Chbosky’s high school set tale of music, depression, friendship, and alienation (like myself) will be more than happy to know that thematically and structurally the film stays true to the source material. The only real problem is that it’s apparent that Chbosky is a far more talented writer than he is a director.
