It’s the Battle of the Pop Docs as Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift release their versions of the truths of their lives. Swift’s Miss Americana is an eye-popping visual diary that addresses some crucial fan points but the star remains at arm’s length. The “raw and emotionally revealing look at one of the most iconic artists of our time during a transformational… View Post
Louise Archambault’s touching film And the Birds Rained Down, based on Jocelyne Saucier’s 2011 novel, was named to TIFF’s Top Ten Films list. It opens in theatres across Canada this week. It follows elderly hermits (Kenneth Walsh, Remy Girard and Gilbert Sicotte) who live off the land in a heavily forested area of Northern Quebec. Wildfires are burning and they’re in its… View Post
Guy Ritchie re-ups his signature London underworld action thriller with The Gentlemen a crime puzzle/heist gauntlet on steroids, chock full of co-dependent bromances, an easy to take crowd-pleaser. The usual. Charlie Hunnam, Hugh Grant, Colin Farrell, Henry Golding and Eddie Marson and alpha dogs, Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary) and American ex-pat drug lord Matthew McConaughey. His massively successful marijuana grow operation’s renowned… View Post
Robert Zemeckis’ fact-based UFO series Project Blue Book begins its second season on History this week, continuing the incredible story of the US Air Force’ investigation into UFOs following an alleged alien landing in Roswell New Mexico in 1947. It’s the Cold War and the military is on high alert, not just scanning the skies for foreign threats against the… View Post
Alfre Woodard’s morally and spiritually exhausted prison warden in Chinonye Chukwu’s tense drama Clemency lives in the brain long after the film ends. Warden Williams oversees executions in her facility and has managed to repress the horror; she’s developed an intense rigidity that colours her job and her marriage; unable to sleep or connect with her long-suffering husband, she’s an automaton, carrying… View Post
Ladj Ly’s timely take on Victor Hugo’s novel, Les Misérables moves from 1862 to present-day Paris, when racism, immigration bias, police corruption, enforced prostitution and poverty still thrive. The added elements of instability, drug addiction and trafficking help push the divide between the have-nots and the police. For instance, three gendarmes, the thuggish white lead man, a black officer straddling moral… View Post