Funny Boy: Canuck Oscar Contender Charts Gay Coming-of-Age Story, Sri Lankan-Style
Review, PreviewJim SlotekAva Duvernay, Deepa Mehta, CBC, Oscar contender, Funnt Boy, Gay themes, Canadian, Sri Lankan, Shyam Selvadurai, adaptation, Alice Munro, Civil War, Sri Lankan civil war
Rocks: Lovely, Affecting Drama Captures Silliness and Sorrow of Teen at a Crossroads
Review, PreviewJim SlotekRocks, TIFF 2019, Sarah Gavron, Bukky Bakray, D’angelou Osei Kissiedu, Kosar Ali, Teenage story, Coming of age, London
Black Bear: Aubrey Plaza plays with our heads in the woods, and uses her deadpan to best effect in intriguingly weird film
ReviewJim SlotekBlack Bear, Aubrey Plaza, Surreality, Lawrence Michael Levine, Ambiguity in film plots, Christopher Abbott, Sarah Gadon, Movies set in the woods, Movies about movies, Robert Leitzell
Stardust: Imagined David Bowie Adventure Lacks Imagination and Adventure
Happiest Season: Heart-lukewarming LGBTQ themed Christmas movie is the cinematic equivalent of gifted socks
ReviewJim SlotekLGBTQ themed Christmas Movies, Happiest Season, Writer/director Clea DuVall, The Christmas House, 12 Dates of Christmas, A New York Christmas Wedding, Kristen Stewart, Dan Levy, Mackenzie Davis, Mary Steenburgen, Victor Garber, Alison Brie, Mary Holland, Aubrey Plaza
Fear of Dancing: Intriguing doc about why some (like Stephen Fry) are chronically unable to get down with their bad selves
The COVID Cruise: How a repeat plague ship, The Diamond Princess, became the ultimate COVID super spreader
ReviewJim SlotekCOVID-19, Disease outbreaks on cruise ships, The Diamond Princess, Yokohama, Captain Gennaro Arma, Mike Downie and David Wells, Gay Courter, Spencer Fehrenbacher, Ya Tsan, SeaDream 1
Tales of the Uncanny: Doc on Horror Anthologies Necessarily Captures Genre’s Best and Worst
Review, PreviewJim SlotekTales of the Uncanny, David Gregory, Horror, Horror anthology, The Uncanny, Creepshow, The Theatre Bizarre, Stephen King, Roger Corman
Sweet Parents: Dour tale of young New Yorkers seeking old money to launch their careers could have worked as farce
ReviewJim SlotekSweet Parents, Sugar daddies, Lifestyles of young and ambitious New Yorkers, Leah Rudick, David Bly, Chris Roberti, Jacob Mondry, Casey Biggs, Barbara Weetman, Restauranteurs in movies
Running Wild: The Cats of Cornwall Doc Compassionately Highlights Plight of Cat Homelessness
Review, PreviewJim SlotekRunning Wild: The Cats of Cornwall, Mellissa Alepins, TVOntario, TVO documentary, Cat homelessness, Community cats, Cat rescue, Volunteers, Animal welfare, Social issues
Amadeus: The Director’s Cut Revisits Milos Forman’s Mozart Extravaganza. That’s All
Review, Preview, ViewsJim SlotekAmadeus, Mozart, Biopic, Milos Forman, F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Director's Cut, Oscar winner, Drama, Twyla Tharp
Vanguard: Weak Storytelling and Wonky CGI Diminish Jackie Chan Actioner
Collective: Searing Doc Chronicles Corruption Exposed by Tragedy and the Journos Who Followed It
Review, PreviewJim SlotekCollective, TIFF 2019, Alexander Nanau, Documentary, Romanian movies, cinema verité, journalism, Fire, tragedy
Sound of Metal: A deeply affecting portrait of a drummer whose life is upturned with the loss of his hearing
By Karen Gordon
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ReviewJim SlotekSound of Metal, TIFF 2018, Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Darius Marder, Q&A, Deafness, Deaf culture, Drama, Derek Cianfrance
Mank: A workmanlike retelling of Citizen Kane's apocryphal man-behind-the-masterpiece myth
ReviewJim SlotekMovies about golden age Hollywood, Mank, Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, David Fincher, Orson Welles, Citizen Kane, Herman J. Mankiewicz, Gary Oldman, Lily Collins, Tom Burke, Erik Messerschmidt, George S. Kaufman, SJ Perelman, Ben Hecht, Irving Thalberg, William Randolph Hearst, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Donald Graham Burt, Jack Fincher, Upton Sinclair, Amanda Seyfried, Marion Davies, Tuppence Middleton, Pauline Kael
The Twentieth Century: An improbable U.S. release for one of the most bizarre Canadian historical backward glances
ReviewJim SlotekThe Twentieth Century, Surrealist portrayal of Canadian history, Matthew Rankin, William Lyon Mackenzie King, A Very Double Life, Robertson Davies, Dan Beirne, Kee Chan, Guy Maddin, University of Toronto’s Kappa Alpha Society, Arthur Meighen, Brent Skagford, Seán Cullen, Lord Minto, Canadian movies released in the U.S.
The Last Vermeer: Fascinating True-Life Story Underserved by Middling Drama
By Karen Gordon
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Review, PreviewJim SlotekThe Last Vermeer, Guy Pearce, Claes Bang, WWII, Nazis, Dan Friedkin, Drama, Vicky Krieps, Forgery
Donbass: Conspiracies, event actors, antifa, fake news... all mordantly played out in Russian and Ukrainian
ReviewJim SlotekRussian occupation of Eastern Ukraine, Sergey Loznitsa’s Donbass, Novorossiya, “New Russia”, Cannes' Un Certain Regard, Film Movement Plus, Boris Kamorzin, Evgeny Chepurnyak, Lyudmila Smorodina, Alexander Zamuraev, Thorsten Merten, Fake news, Event actors, Propaganda
First We Eat: Doc about a family's challenge to 'eat local' in the Yukon is a fun take on a global reality
ReviewJim SlotekEating locally in the far north, First We Eat, Dawson City, Chinook salmon, Northern sources of salt, Global food supplies, Hot Docs Festival, Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in, Northern Indigenous diets, Virtual theatres
Martin Eden: Italian-ized Jack London novel is equal parts brilliant and exasperating
ReviewJim SlotekMartin Eden, Jack London novel, Foreign film adaptations of American novels, Luca Marinell, Pietro Marcello, Leo Tolstoy, Kunstlerroman, Giustiniano Alpi, Jessica Cressy, Carlo Cecch, Socialism versus fascism
