The Handmaiden is a tautly executed new thriller from Park Chan-wook.* Set in Japanese-occupied Korea, it tells the story of Sook-hee, a young woman who is hired to serve Lady Hideko, a woman who lives with her eccentric uncle in an isolated manor. But all is not what it seems; Sook-hee is secretly working with […]
It’s been a rough couple of weeks. Rough couple of months. All of 2016, really; it’s kicking humanity’s ass and it’s hard to see any light in a tunnel that doesn’t look like it has an end. The news is a daily deluge of depression, social media’s awash with empty protest, and I keep googling […]
The Toronto International Film Festival movies are starting to make their way to major markets. Here’s a quick look at what we saw back in September that you should be looking out for. Mean Dreams This gritty Canadian indie is like the live-action version of famed Wes Anderson cartoon Moonrise Kingdom but scarier. Future superstar Josh […]
It’s time, once again, for the On DVD series featuring new releases from Paramount Home Distribution and Elevation Pictures. Genius Written by heavy-hitter John Logan …
My favourite TIFF film of the year was writer/director Andrea Arnold’s American Honey (in theatres now), a meandering travelogue about a group of lost kids who find an imperfect home in a cramped bus travelling the country together to sell magazine subscriptions under the thumb of self-made-almost-woman Krystal (Riley Keough in one of 2016’s most indelible […]
Written and directed by SNL‘s recently promoted co-head writer Chris Kelly, Other People follows misanthropic struggling writer David (Jesse Plemons) in the final year of his mother’s life. We first meet Joanne (Molly Shannon in the performance of her career) applying makeup for a New Years Eve party that’s raging downstairs without her. She has […]
I’ve intermittently loved and hated Richard Linklater’s work. Coming off of prestige drama Boyhood (which I maintain is interesting but overrated) and sticking his toes back in the boy-comedy period film pool that made him famous with Dazed and Confused (which I predictably can’t stand), the director’s 1980-set Everybody Wants Some!! (those exclamation marks are […]
Ira Sachs’ new independent feature Little Men is a heartbreaking portrait of friendship and the impossibility of adulthood. Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri- the latter in one of the breakout performances of the year as brazen and self-possessed Brooklyn kid Tony- star as two young boys who are thrown together and become the best of […]