Much like the subject of his second feature documentary, Neil Berkeley is on the road around midday in Southern California. I can occasionally hear road noise and his blinker in the background as he talks on his hands free connection while I’m on the other end in Toronto. It’s oddly fitting and leads to a […]
We talk to writer/director Jeremy Saulnier and actor Macon Blair about their work on the subdued revenge thriller Blue Ruin and about the film’s subdued nature, the creation of Blair’s character, trusting the audience to come to the right conclusions, and where Bliar’s exceptional on-screen facial hair now resides in Saulnier’s house.
If you can get past the somewhat awkward and out of place first act, The Railway Man is worth it overall. It’s a compelling enough drama, but it keeps hinting at a lot more depth that never quite surfaces.
Everything Will Be Canadian Spectrum Julia Kwan’s look at a rapidly disappearing way of life in Vancouver’s Chinatown is a vital and vibrant piece of work for anyone worried about gentrification or the need for convenience over character. It’s an elegy, not a eulogy, but it could very soon be seen as one. With a […]
Sleepless in New York Love, Factually Nicely balancing the pain of heartbreak (and sometimes the creepiness and schadenfreude) of a relationship ending with a spattering of science and anthropology, Academy Award nominee Christian Frei’s latest outing is an unpretentious series of snapshots dedicated towards a better understanding of the ending of dreams and the struggles […]
Adam Rifkin has directed and written films of every genre possible, but this is the first time he has ever made a film about someone so close to him that he actually considers them family. For the documentary Giuseppe Makes a Movie (debuting at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival this week), the usually […]
Songs for Alexis Made in Denmark The romance at the heart of Elvira Lind’s Songs for Alexis might feature a teenage trans man and his girlfriend, but it’s appeal goes far beyond just being an LGBT-centred documentary. It’s such a painfully realistic look at how being a teenager in love can be one of the […]
The Agreement Made in Denmark A practically Strangelove-ian, low-fi fly on the wall look at what seems like an inconsequential border dispute takes centre stage in this darkly humorous political documentary that once again serves to prove that many mock United Nations found in high schools are as equally effective as the real governing bodies […]
Actress International Spectrum The actual point of director Robert Greene and actress Brandy Burre (best known for a recurring role on The Wire) is hard to discern, but intriguing to think about. Probably one of the only films to ever cross mumblecore fictional filmmaking with a documentary profile piece, the one thing that is for […]
The Backward Class Canadian Spectrum Far removed from the slums and almost pathetically impoverished outlying areas of Bangalore, India there’s a residential school refuge for students who wish to rise above the lowly and antiquated caste they were born into (and deemed “untouchable”). Filmmaker Madeleine Grant goes inside the Shanti Bhavan school to profile and […]
Come Worry With Us! Next One doesn’t have to be a fan of the post-rock orchestral stylings of Montreal’s Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra to enjoy or understand this equally amusing and dramatic anti-rock doc from Helene Klodawsky. It’s a keenly observant and universally relatable story of loving parents who want to do right […]
The 21st annual Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival is upon us - running Thursday, April 24th to Sunday, May 4th - and here's your one stop shop for all of our reviews, interviews, features, and festivities from the largest festival of its kind in North America.
The Writer with No Hands Nightvision In 1997 screenwriter Raw Deal screenwriter Gary DeVore disappeared. A year later his body was found submerged in the California aqueduct without his hands. No one knows what happened, but British writer Matthew Alford has been obsessed with the case for years. He’s convinced that Alford was murdered as […]
Whitey: The United States v. James J. Bulger Special Presentations Paradise Lost trilogy filmmaker Joe Berlinger looks at one of the most notorious and wanted gangsters in US history: James “Whitey” Bulger, the notoriously iron fisted and widely feared head of Boston’s Irish mob who disappeared almost without a trace in 1994 until his capture […]
The Theory of Happiness Canadian Spectrum Gregory Gan’s The Theory of Happiness is a magnetic, upsetting, consistently good looking and compelling documentary about a Ukrainian math cult. A journal of his time spent as a newbie in P.O.R.T.O.S. – a collective based on a spiritual math equation for happiness – this documentary starts off as […]
