As far as religious retellings go Son of God is a mostly passable highlight reel of the New Testament that should largely please the faithful and not bore the unconverted or disinterested to tears. It's just a shame that the first half has very obviously been cobbled together from the TV miniseries most of its footage comes from.
The engrossing and incredibly well researched and laid out documentary Lost Heroes: The Untold Story of Canadian Superheroes seeks to preserve and restore a legacy of Canadian literature that no one back in the 1940s really thought to protect all that much.
Omar (nominated for Best Foreign Film at this Sunday's Oscar ceremony) is an emotional thriller that actually works a lot better as raw drama rather than as any type of geo-political statement or message movie that it thinks it can muster.
We take a look at six exceptional films playing at this year's Human Rights Watch Film Festival, starting tonight at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, designed to shine a light on societal problems around the world and to foster necessary dialogues, discussions, and hopefully change for the future.
Valentine Road Discrimination is universal and some of the most horrible examples of it are happening in our very own schools. Valentine Road is an emotional gut punch of a film, keeping manipulation at bay and letting the story of its sadly departed victim of high school violence and those affected by it speak for […]
Saving Face Winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary Short in 2012, Saving Face addresses one of Pakistan’s most horrific societal issues— the alarmingly frequent acid attacks on women. The shocking truth is that most of these attacks are being perpetrated by spouses or other close family members. The film follows the lives of acid-attack […]
The Missing Picture Nominated this year for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars (but strangely not for Best Documentary, where it also could have been a contender) and winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes last year, Rithy Panh’s multimedia look at the devastation caused by the Khmer Rouge during the Kampuchea Revolution […]
In the Shadow of the Sun In the African nation of Tanzania, home to approximately 170,000 people who could be classified as albino, having an off colour pigment could be deadly. Not only do these people have to deal with the kind of teasing and potential for bodily harm that goes hand in hand with […]
Highway of Tears Aside from the victims of high profile serial killer trial of Robert Pickton, more than 40 women and possibly hundreds more have gone missing along the tragically monikered Highway of Tears in Vancouver. Home to a large First Nations population still scarred from years of residential schooling abuse and a constantly acrimonious […]
Big Men “Everyone has the desire and drive to be well off in life,” or so says one of the subjects of Rachel Boynton’s fascinating, frightening, and multi-faceted look at the often corruptible and highly lucrative African oil trade. It’s a line said by a savvy investor who thinks he’s “movin’ on up like The […]
We talk with Will Pascoe, director of the documentary Lost Heroes: The Untold Story of Canadian Superheroes about the largely forgotten about or sadly lost legacy of the Canadian born superhero.
The Canadian thriller Solo lives up to its modest title and supplies no more and no less than what’s needed to be effective. A stripped down killer-on-the-loose yarn and survival narrative, first time feature filmmaker Isaac Cravit has crafted a taut, beautifully shot, and well performed reworking of genre formula.
Stalingrad is essentially the Russian equivalent of Pearl Harbor in terms of both historical context and as a kind of appropriate comparison between this box office hit in its home country and a sort of North American counterpart. It's a serious battle with stunning sequences that can't realize how silly of a movie it is.
Non-Stop is great. It’s not great in the way that a traditional award winning kind of film should be great, but it’s a near perfect bit of action entertainment that solidifies Liam Neeson’s status as one of the best leading men the genre has ever had.
We take an overview of this year's Toronto Irish Film Festival (starting this Friday and running through Sunday at the TIFF Bell Lightbox) and review the delightful opening night documentary The Irish Pub and the not so delightful indie drama Made in Belfast.
