When thinking outside the box just isn't enough
In honour of the release of Denys Arcand’s most recent film, The Fall of the American Empire, I thought I would take a look at his roots, the head-turning Quebecois classic, The Decline of the American Empire (Le déclin de l’émpire américain). A film that, in 1986, seemed very topical and relevant. The Cold War […]
Last February, I wrote about Don Hertzfeldt’s first feature film It’s Such a Beautiful Day. Among other things it amazed me how many themes he could explore in such a short amount of time and also do it so in depth and with so much meaning. As I wrote: “Hetzfeldt is able to make us feel […]
Here I am again! Reviewing another of Hollywood’s most awful, probably best left untouched. With the release of a new Star Wars film and the holiday season, I thought it was the perfect time to re-open the vault! So here is my review of the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special. George Lucas once famously quipped […]
In advance of the new film, The Disaster Artist directed by James Franco, which came out yesterday, I thought I would review a now classic cult film, The Room, directed, produced and starring leading man Tommy Wiseau beside his “best friend” Greg Sestero who plays the supporting role of Mark. I had for years heard about the infamous […]
“It’s a show about nothing!” A quote often attributed to the 1990’s classic sitcom Seinfeld describes the show and this film well. But while in Seinfeld they refer to nothing as the minutiae of daily life, Un Chien Andalou is truly a movie about nothing that is in fact meant to mean nothing. In the […]
Back in 1960s America there were three major news networks NBC, CBS and ABC, though as one talking head says in reference to ABC, “There are three networks but if there were four, they’d be fourth.” At the time, networks still provided gavel-to-gavel coverage of political party conventions, but ABC, lacking the resources the other […]
Have you ever thought to yourself: what would happen if I mixed one of the worst disasters in human history with an anthropomorphic rapping dog and shoddy animation? Well fret not because Titanic: The Legend Goes On… answers your question in every sense of the word! The cockamamie project was conceived by Italian director Camillo Teti. […]
Don Hertzfeldt is mostly known for his animated short comedy Rejected, a collection of surrealist cartoons aimed at critiquing our consumer society but also to get a good laugh. The short was nominated for an Oscar in 2000. I first discovered Hertzfeldt in the seventh grade randomly coming upon one of his shorts on YouTube: […]
For a while, I had been avoiding comedies, seldom watching them, and often opting for hard-hitting dramas. Perusing through Netflix, however, I came across this one film in the foreign language section, Wild Tales, an Argentinian flick from 2015. I decided to give it a shot and was not disappointed; this was indeed what I […]
Although I like to think of myself as a pretentious film snob who despises the consumerism of Christmas, I do have a soft sport for Christmas movies; they are my guilty pleasure so to speak. These movies are often put into the broad category of “Christmas movie” while I think that there are a variety […]
I thought today would be quite fitting to review this classic film seeing as its main star, Kirk Douglas turns 100. Douglas had many great films but it is inarguable that his most memorable is in fact Spartacus, released in 1960 by Universal and directed by the legendary and controversial Stanley Kubrick. The film is not […]
Welcome back to Friday Film Review. Alright so it isn’t Friday but from here on out I will aim to have these film reviews on a weekly basis every Friday for your weekend viewing pleasure. For my first review, I’ve chosen the film Network from 1976 directed by Sidney Lumet and brilliantly penned by Paddy […]
Back in the 60s, North America was beginning to experience new and revolutionary kinds of music. From the Beatles to the Animals, to the Who, the British music scene made its way to the continent with fervor and vigor. This mass musical migration was dubbed the British Invasion. There now seems to be a new […]
