Since all three of this week's major releases all press screened at the same night and time during the week, here now are our reviews of the smart and funny remake of About Last Night and the astoundingly and laughably awful Winter's Tale. Also, an explanation as to why we don't have new reviews for Endless Love or Gloria, we double back on last week's never press screened Vampire Academy, we a look at Pussy Riot: A Punk Rock Prayer, which was the only new film at the Bloor this week, a special sneak at The Bloor tonight, family day offerings at The Bloor and the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and a look ahead to a Lightbox retrospective of some of Jean-Luc Godard's favourite Hollywood films starting on Thursday.
Fly Colt Fly Blending interviews, archival news footage, animation, and staged recreations, this documentary look at one of the biggest folk hero criminals in American history does a fine job explaining how one teenager who posed a concern to many could become an icon to others. Filmmakers Andrew and Adam Gray look into the life […]
I Learn America Focusing on five recent immigrants, 3 in their senior year, at New York City’s International High School at Lafayette, Jean-Michel Dissard and Gitte Peng’s documentary I Learn America takes on the traditional adolescent growing pains, while focusing on the challenges of navigating a new culture and language. The filmmakers’ gain an impressive […]
Enter for a chance to win a copy of the riveting docuemntary The Armstrong Lie on DVD, courtesy of Dork Shelf and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Haiti Untold A well meaning and well intentioned documentary doesn’t always make for the greatest movie, as evidenced by Dan Shannon and Isabelle Depelteau’s surprisingly predominantly white-centric look at the rebuilding effort in Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake. Getting in on the ground with the organizations and volunteers who are funding and actively working […]
Playing catch up from last week (still), here are looks at two great Canadian films (Rhymes for Young Ghouls and Three Night Stand), a great documentary (12 O'Clock Boys), and a pair of middling romantic dramadeys (At Middleton and Brightest Star).
This week at The Bloor Cinema, films and stories about children featuring Nina Davenport's First Comes Love and film scholar Mark Cousins' more literally titled A Story of Children and Film
We talk with 12 O'Clock Boys director Lotfy Nathan about being an outsider chronicling inner city dirt bike riding culture in Baltimore, interacting with his subjects, and what it’s like to get a police summons for filming illegal behaviour.
Due to our Film Editor being down for the count this week (tearing tendons in his foot and having the flu at the same time), there will sadly be a few reviews missing this week, including the Bloor Cinema column, but he did want to pass along these thoughts for the films he saw but couldn’t write about: I am Divine, Persistence of Vision, Gabrielle, and Ms. 45.
The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema kicks off 2014 with a trio of new films looking at the American educational system (in the perceptive, but flawed and skewed American Promise, extreme marathon runners (in the crowd pleasing Desert Runners), and the plight of the modern honeybee (in the gorgeous looking More than Honey).
Nicky's Family is a doc that should appeal to WWII buffs who like more than a simple regurgitation of facts and crave more personal recreations that tells of the exploits of British stockbroker who ended up saving 669 Jewish children from occupied Czechoslovakia.
We talk to Steve Hoover, the director of the documentary Blood Brother, about his relationship with his best friend has progressed as a result of filming him working with children suffering from AIDS and HIV in rural India, the two sides to his friend's personality, and the film’s gut punching opening sequence.
The Punk Syndrome looks at a special brand of punks that rise above disability to create universally identifiable songs about frustration and rage.
In former Academy Award nominee Lucy Walker's latest documentary, The Crash Reel, the sport of snowboarding gets its finest film: a thoughtful and often heartbreaking look at one athlete struggling to come back to his greatest love after a near life ending accident, but one devoid of standard sports movie cliches in favour of true human emotions and bigger questions about its subjects.
Buried within The Wagner Files is a somewhat decent documentary and talking heads look at how famed German composer Richard Wagner wasn't such a nice person, but it's brought down tremendously by frequently atrocious dramatic recreations of theoretical historic events that are laughably realized and awkwardly integrated.
