By Ben Hoffman
It’s not hard to find somebody to mutter disdain towards the United Nations in the years since the World Trade Center attacks. It has been brought into question time and time again whether the organization is as irrelevant as its post World War I sister, the League of Nations, became before the Second World War.… Continue reading Film Review: WhenMoviesMatter – The Peacekeepers
By Kenzie Love
Pride & Prejudice, the latest take on Jane Austen’s classic novel, is bound to face an uphill climb being one of the few in recent years not starring Colin Firth. However, if those still swooning over the brooding actor’s shirtless appearance in the BBC adaptation of the book give this version a try they might… Continue reading Film Review: Pride and Prejudice should be proud, now don’t be prejudiced towards it.
By Alan Cho
Forget the paper-thin story, generic direction and a cast with the collective acting prowess of Tara Reid’s left boob–for 10 minutes Doom is glorious. Rumours and the trailer only hint at the sublimity of the exact moment you paid to see when the first person perspective becomes the most transcendent moment in cinema today. Not… Continue reading Film Review: Believe it or not, Doom is dumb
Rize, the new documentary by Vanity Fair photographer David LaChapelle, has all the elements you would expect from a depiction of life in South Central Los Angeles. The opening features footage from race riots in both the ’60s and the ’90s. The film’s vivid colours begin to show hyper-kinetic dancing backed by an overbearing hip-hop… Continue reading Film Review: Urban clown dancing gets a Rize
“If not now, when?” This is the central question of director Zarqa Nawaz’s documentary, Me and the Mosque. The film explores the Islamic attitude towards women, specifically in regards to partitions, an alarming new trend in Canadian mosques. These usually opaque barriers separate women from men during prayer. One of many interviewees in the film… Continue reading Film Fest: Me and the Mosque
Rhinoceros Eyes, starring Michael Pitt of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and directed by David Cronenberg’s nephew, is a quirky picture hitting pretty much every cult-film touchstone but managing to elevate itself with pure charm. Pitt plays Chet, a reclusive and probably mentally handicapped kid who works in a movie prop shop. When a woman… Continue reading Film Fest: Rhinoceros Eyes
Coming to Calgary boasting great critical acclaim in its native Germany, Go for Zucker! promised to be one of the highlights of the festival and it didn’t disappoint. The movie tells the story of two brothers, one a gambling, drinking, permanently-in-debt burnout, the other a devout Jew and family man, who must reconcile their differences… Continue reading Film Fest: Go for Zucker!
Amu doesn’t start off strongly, playing like a travelogue combined with an incredibly awkward love story throughout its first half. A recent university grad from Los Angeles travels to Delhi to experience the country she left when she was three years old. She marvels at the architecture, has awkward conversations with her cousin at a… Continue reading Film Fest: Amu
Acting as an almost-sequel of The Mood for Love Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046 is a complicated film following an author, Mr. Chow, through a series of relationships and paralleling them with the tale of one of his character’s escapes from a futuristic city. Though confusing, 2046 expertly examines the trials of love using time in an… Continue reading Film Fest: 2046
Canadian film has enough of a stigma attached to it already, and it would be a shame to discourage people from taking risks on smaller films. Condemning a movie someone spent 13 years–an eighth of a century–working on also feels horrible, but All of a Sudden deserves it. Last year’s Phil the Alien showed Canada… Continue reading Film Fest: All of a Sudden