Directed by the auteur responsible for Snowpiercer, Okja is a star-studded creature feature about a young girl, Mija, as she attempts to protect her titular best friend from a multinational company.
Swiss Army Man proves that a fart joke can be melancholic, magical, inspiring, adventurous, and moving, and that’s not even the movie’s finest achievement.
Win passes to an advanced screening of Swiss Army Man in Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, Winnipeg, Edmonton or Halifax.
TIFF didn't announce an opening night film alongside today's announcements of Galas and Special Presentations for their 2014 festival this September, but they announced plenty to get people excited for the event.
And now for something a little different: A video review! Dork Shelf's own Brandon Bastaldo takes a look at Steve McQueen's slavery drama 12 Years a Slave starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender.
There’s no doubt in my mind that 12 Years a Slave will go down in history as a landmark film. Never before, and quite possibly never again, has the issue of African American slavery and the still present pain and anguish been this viscerally and brilliantly realized. Its effect is provocative, much like gazing into an unattended open wound that never quite heals itself, but rather reaches a point of stasis beyond which things couldn’t possibly get any worse no matter how awful a situation may be.
Enter for a chance to win one of five pairs of passes to an advance screening of 12 Years a Slave in Toronto on Wednesday, October 16th, courtesy of Dork Shelf and Fox Searchlight.
Gorgeously shot and impeccably directed by Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, Prisoners still has a bit too much going on across its two and a half hour running time. It never fully bogs down until it becomes a completely different – and sadly far less satisfying – movie in its final 40 minutes.
12 Years a Slave Special Presentation Director: Steve McQueen A mere capsule review at festival time could never do justice to McQueen’s powerful masterwork that’s not so much an excellent piece of filmmaking, but a landmark cinematic achievement. While no one left alive today could possibly ever be able to relay the atrocities of America’s […]
This week at the video store, we check out the timely comedy of The Campaign, the out of time Oliver Stone thriller Savages, the zombie apocalypse of [REC]3: Genesis, the romantic dramedy stylings of A Little Bit of Heaven and Ruby Sparks, and the goings on in the world of Mad Men.
Films like Looper come around so infrequently, and it’s doubtful that anyone could have seen into the future to know it would have turned out this great. It’s a gutsy and uncompromising genre film that will be hailed as a classic staple by many who see it.
Enter to win a pair of tickets to an advance screening of TIFF's 2012 opening night film Looper exclusively in Ottawa, Halifax, and Winnipeg on Wednesday, September 26th from Dork Shelf and Alliance Films. Five lucky winners in each city will also receive a special edition Looper pocket watch!
Though it might start out as a standard quirky rom-com, Ruby Sparks is actually a charming, nuanced, funny, bittersweet, and wholly satisfying enterprise designed to take the manic pixie dream girl cliche down from the inside.
This week on DVD and Blu-Ray, takes on Mel Gibson in Get the Gringo, Lockout, Friends With Kids, Being FlynnA Bag of Hammers, and the fourth season of TV's Sanctuary, while Phil Brown sinks into American Reunion, Silent House, and Bobcat Golthwait's God Bless America.
Paul Weitz’s Being Flynn is a tonally muddled and confused little movie, but ultimately an interesting one. It wants to be a dark and morally ambiguous slice of urban misery with a redemptive core, yet it never quite achieves that somewhat counterintuitive mash up. However, there are enough interesting ideas and a handful of solid performances (including a long awaited return to form for Robert DeNiro) that make it a hard movie to dislike.
