The high concept “based on a true story” comedy Tag starts off refreshingly like a more genteel and heartfelt reworking of The Hangover, but gradually the film’s manic energy, goodwill, and creativity starts getting chipped away thanks to an emerging mean streak that threatens to derail everything likable.
Although lacking in the grit and stakes of Gordon Parks Jr.’s 1972 blaxploitation classic, music video veteran Director X’s modernist updating of Superfly for the trap rap era isn’t without certain charms.
A quietly restrained emotional rollercoaster contained within an in-depth sociological case study, the documentary Becoming What I Was offers a look into the scars left behind for an entire uprooted and banished culture and how even the most seemingly serene of religions can be imperfect and borderline unjust.
We take a look at some of the selections from this year’s Breakthroughs Film Festival, the only screening series of its kind in Canada to look exclusively at the short films of emerging female filmmakers, happening at The Royal in Toronto on Friday, June 15 and Saturday, June 16.
Beast, writer-director Michael Pearce’s unlikely mash-up of a rural romantic drama and a serial killer film, is haunting, disturbing, and remarkably nuanced.
True crime and courtroom drama aficionados might already be familiar with the comprehensive, landmark documentary The Staircase, and if they aren’t, they should get acquainted with it immediately.
On an entertainment level, Incredibles 2 is the most satisfying major studio blockbuster of the summer movie season thus far. On a storytelling level, it’s a sequel that’s virtually on par with the original. And on a technical level, it’s Pixar’s most elaborate and gorgeous achievement to date.
We catch up with British writer-director Michael Pearce to talk about his debut feature Beast (opening in select Canadian cities on Friday, June 15), a moral and thrilling relationship drama set in his former hometown of Jersey in the Channel Islands.
Plodding and curiously inert, the Canadian drama Prodigals stitches together two casually addressed and underbaked storylines into an overlong slog.
Although comparisons to the similarly queer themed teenage rom-com Love, Simon from earlier this year are inevitable, writer-director Craig Johnson’s raunchier Netflix original film Alex Strangelove has more in common with the American Pie franchise than John Hughes, and that shift from gentility to risqué behaviour works greatly in its favour.
