Festivals
Screening at the 2012 Inside Out Film Festival, My Best Day may seem like a rural comedy, but look a little bit deeper and you’ll find a film full of characters just trying to find their place in the world. Written and directed by Erin Greenwell, My Best Day is the story of Karen (Rachel Style), a receptionist at a refrigerator repair shop working on the Fourth of July. She gets a call from her father, whom she has never met, and decides to go to his home to see him. Her friend Meagan (Ashlie Atkinson) poses as a repairman...
Hole was a big deal to me when I was a teenager. I wore out their album, “Live Through This,” when it came out in 1994. I saw them play Lollapalooza in 1995 and songs like ’Miss World‘ or ‘Violet‘ instantly transport me back to the time when strong, outspoken woman rockers dominated the music charts. Hit So Hard perfectly documents my beloved grunge era while pulling back the curtain on some of the truly troubled individulas who made all of that memorable music. Patty Schemel may not be the person you picture when you think of Hole, but as the group’s troubled yet oddly level-headed drummer she was the undercover heart...
If you’re the type of person who likes your movies melancholic and melodramatic, then Richard LeMay’s Naked As We Came is the movie for you. This is not to say that the film doesn’t satisfy on these levels, but rather that you have to be prepared to dive into a particular mood for the entirety of the film. If you’re properly armed to handle the onslaught of yelling and screaming in this family drama, then you may actually leave in tears. With films like this one, that’s the point. Elliot and Laura (Ryan Vigilant and Karmine Alers) are hardly model children....
Most Torontonians from my generation remember City TV’s Baby Blue Movies on Saturday nights. More specifically, many people remember watching them at a hushed volume so as to not wake their parents. But, other than the novelty and kitsch value, the movies had few redeeming qualities. If you want to relive the feeling you had while sneaking around watching these exciting, but ultimately terrible soft core movies, you should check out Our Paradise. Our Paradise revolves around the professional life of Vassili, a full-time prostitute and part-time murderer. One night, while leaving a victims house through the forest, he stumbles...
Indonesia is slowly becoming established in North America as a great country for film, and this year’s Inside Out Film Festival is featuring one of Indonesia’s more recent offerings, Madame X. Featuring an adorable cast, Madame X has a political undercurrent without being preachy. Madame X’s featured character, Adam, is introduced as a male-to-female transsexual working at a spa with friends who act like his adoptive parents. While celebrating his birthday, he is visited by a shaman-esque woman who tells Adam of his prophesied destiny. Although strange, Adam thinks little of it at the time and continues to celebrate his...
Cloudburst is the story of Stella (Olympia Dukakis) and Dot (Brenda Fricker), a lesbian couple who have been living, loving, and aging together for more than 30 years. When the mostly blind Dot has a small accident, her granddaughter maneuvers her into a nursing home, effectively leaving Stella alone and soon to be evicted from the home she’s lived in for decades. Stella sneaks into Dot’s new home and they steal away, embarking on a road trip to Canada to make their unofficial union legal. On their way, they pick up a young hitchhiker named Prentice (Ryan Doucette) who is...
For a movie about how no obstacle can stand in the way of true love, Morgan is awfully depressing. When we first meet the title character in Michael D. Akers’ latest love story, he’s waking up to a pretty meaningless existence. He’s recently handicapped and, after wheeling himself to the fridge for a beer, he plops himself on the couch and just starts piling them back while watching television. The man just got up and the movie just got started. I miss the days when gay meant happy. Structurally, Morgan is extremely straight-forward. Morgan, played by sweet-faced, Leo Minaya, used...
At the 2012 Oscars, much of the buzz in Canada was about Monsieur Lazhar, the French-Canadian film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. This attention was, of course, well deserved, but may have taken attention away from some of the other nominees. One such nominee that may have slipped under your radar is Bullhead, a Belgian movie directed by Michael R. Roskam. Starring Matthias Schoenaerts, who gained over 50 pounds of muscle to play Jacky Vanmarsenille, Bullhead follows Jacky and his family as they raise cattle on their farm, while taking part in the illegal animal growth-hormone trade. While Jacky...
The last time many of us saw Kåre Hedebrant, it was in Let The Right One In. He’s grown up quite a lot and is now starring in Cupid’s Balls, screening at the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival. Directed by Kristoffer Metcalfe, the film follows Lucas (Kåre Hedebrant) as he moves from Sweden to Norway with his mother. Most of the youth in town play soccer, hoping to get another shot at winning the Norway Cup. Even though Lucas is terrible at sports, he decides to try and join the team, but that’s just to impress the team captain’s girlfriend...
Names like Skrillex, Mark Ronson, and Pretty Lights may be familiar to the generation of kids out there now, but what about Martha Reeves, or Ralph Stanley? Those aren’t likely to be musicians that anyone under 20 has ever heard of. In an idea formed with the Grammys, six DJs were given different genres of music and asked to create a song blending their style with a older form of music. Screening at the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival, Re:Generation Music Project, directed by Amir Bar-Lev, goes behind the scenes with DJ Premier, Skrillex, Pretty Lights, Mark Ronson, and duo The...
Inspired by true events and screening as part of the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival, 17 Girls is the story of a group of teen girls who decide to all get pregnant at the same time. Camille (Louise Grinberg) is the first of the group to find out she’s pregnant. Fear is her first thought, but her reaction changes as she begins to think about having someone who will love her unconditionally forever, something she seems to lack in her own family. One by one, her friends get caught up in the idea that having a baby will change their...
