I'm a published writer, illustrator, and film critic. Cinema has been a passion of mine since my first viewing of Milius' Conan the Barbarian and my film tastes go from experimental to modern blockbuster.
First thing I want to see about this film is the incredible cinematography by Benjamin Loeb. Capturing the long and harsh winters of Prince George, British Colombia, Loeb’s lens casts a clear, but perceptive eye with beautiful blue and green tones that blends in well with the bits of city life in the story…
I was talking the other day about how I’m tired of the writer trope in films. Misunderstood genius who sees the forest for the trees and lives a tortured lifestyle that feeds his pen. That’s right, he. There are lot movies about writers, real life ones too, but most of them are about men under that same literary trope. This is why it was refreshing to see an upbeat comedy about a female writer and her family at TIFF…
The desert is a poetic constraint that regenerates when people and their lives inhabit it. The wind blows over arid environments creating a fresh canvas at the light break of the sun. Oliver Laxe’s Mimosas plays out like a classical western film where there are potential double crossers, semi-saviors, and suspenseful stand offs. Yet this movie also offers so much more…
There is so much in the pursuit of sport that brings a passion to win…
In the 1980s, Director Livia Ungur was a young child during communist rule in Romania where most of the citizens were exposed to very little western fare. One of the shows that did make it there was the long running American television soap opera called Dallas. Starring Patrick Duffy, Linda Grey, Larry Hagman and others, the show captivated its audiences with its allure of glamour, intrigue, and corruption…
At first, the film seems one of a complicated subject: Mr. Badii (Homayon Ershadi) drives around Tehran looking for someone who will bury him after he commits suicide. He doesn’t come right out and say it, but tells candidates there is big money in this small job. Not at any time of the film are we given his motivations for…
The suggestions of magical realms within our own realities are often dismissed as part of the human imagination. Sometimes superstition and fantasy are ways people use to try to survive insurmountable truths thereby helping them navigate a world that they cannot fully understand. In Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendour, the director…
Wings of Desire starts with a man jotting down the story of a universal child who didn’t know it was a child. Titles come up as if they were scratched up on a blackboard. An eye looks up into the sky and the camera fades into a slowly moving aerial shot from above the tenements of Berlin. An angel with fading wings…
One of the cool things about being a kid in the eighties were television shows like The Twilight Zone, Tales From The Crypt, and one of my favorites, Tales From The Darkside. These television anthologies were vignettes in the form of thrillers, science fiction stories, horror tales, and mysteries.
Last year I chose an episode of The Love Boat for the calendar. There were three plot lines in it and frivolity throughout. This year, I picked The X-Files. This “Monster Of The Week” episode (an episode apart from the continuing storyline of the series), stars David Duchovny (Fox Mulder) and Gillian Anderson (Dana Scully) as the regulars, with guest hosts Ed Asner (as Maurice) and Lily Tomlin (as Lyda).