Greedy Lying Bastards Review
Undeniably fascinating, terrifying and entertaining, the climate change polemic Greedy Lying Bastards still finds itself being occasionally undercut by a level of smugness that would make Michael Moore blush.
film
Interview: Sean Garrity
We talk to Winnipeg born and current Toronto area filmmaker Sean Garrity about his dueling projects at the beginning of this year (with the award winning My Awkward Sexual Adventure and this weekend's Blood Pressure), suburban malaise, collaborating with actors, his working relationship with writer and actor Jonas Chernick, and what draws him to films about fledgling relationships.
Interview: Brett Heard
We talk with writer, director, and former stand-up Brett Heard about his latest project, the Canadian made bachelor party comedy Stag, and assembling a cast of comic veterans to make a more realistic and character based look at what a drunken night of debauchery actually looks like.
Reincarnated Review
While telling the historical background of Snoop Lion (nee Dogg) quite well, Reincarnated ultimately doesn’t answer, or even ask, any of the central questions that come to mind watching it because it’s too focused on chalice puffing and nostalgia.
This Week in DVD: 3/12/13
This week brings out some heavy hitters at the video store including Life of Pi, The Master, Hitchcock, Smashed, Playing for Keeps, This Must be the Place, and A Late Quartet.
March Break Heroes at TIFF
Just in time for March Break, the TIFF Bell Lightbox has arranged a selection of superheroes and comic book saviours for your viewing pleasure.
Cloudburst Review
Although admirable and stacked with two excellent leads, the cloyingly sentimental and thoroughly underlined dramedy Cloudburst would be more at home on the Hallmark Channel than it would be on the big screen. That is, if Hallmark wasn't so conservative and they would actually take a queer themed, octogenarian love story.
Shepard and Dark Review
A touching though sometimes lagging story about enduring friendship, Shepard and Dark highlights aspects of Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark’s relationship that has now spanned half a century. The impetus for the documentary is the archiving of hundreds of letters that passed back and forth between them over the decades. As much about the individual men as their correspondence, one can’t help but feel this lingering film would have been much more compelling as a documentary short as opposed to feature length.
Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation Review
The nostalgic documentary Greenwich Village: Music that Defined a Generation never offer audiences much more than hero worship, but considering that somehow this documentary hadn’t been made before now, we guess it’s forgivable.
Dead Man Down Review
Dead Man Down is a big fat mess of a movie made by people who really should know better.
Interview: Chan-wook Park
Dork Shelf talked to famed Korean director Chan-Wook Park (Oldboy) about where his desire to tell such dark stories springs from, why he selected Stoker for his North American debut, the casting process, his identifying with the work of Alfred Hitchcock, and his study of film criticism and philosophy.
Oz the Great and Powerful Review
Oz the Great and Powerful isn’t a particularly great movie overall, but it’s never terribly unwatchable or even all that uninteresting or lacking in entertainment value. It’s the curious case of a film that just has a lot of missteps along the way that add up to an unsatisfactory whole. It's a whishy-washy, sanitized blockbuster that fails to be truly magical.
Neighbouring Sounds Review
Imbued with the spirit of Robert Altman in terms of how sprawling slice-of-life epics should be handled and with a healthy dash of Luis Buñuel’s playfulness, Neighbouring Sounds is truly a wonder to behold. It’s what truly great and vital cinema should be: something more than just entertaining and thought provoking that simply washes over the audience without talking down to them or giving them easy answers.
Interview: Zach Braff
We sit down with actor, writer, and director Zach Braff to talk about his dual role in Sam Raimi's hotly anticipated Oz the Great and Powerful and working with Raimi on making another tale in one of cinema’s most iconic locations, the multimedia based nature of his performance as a talking and flying primate with a jaunty hat, his memories of the original Oz, and why there hasn’t really been a follow up yet to Garden State just yet.
Trouble in the Peace Review
This month's Hot Docs Doc Soup entry The Trouble in the Peace certainly paints a pretty and swift moving picture of gas pipeline corruption in the Peace River section of B.C. and Alberta, but while it doesn't lack heart, it's definitely lacking in substance. Also, strangely enough, it comes with a tie-in video game that might deliver the message better than the film can.
