LIFE    director: Anton Corbijn    opens December 4th    Troubled photographer. Moody, genius actor. LIFE magazine. Sounds like cinema bonanza. Almost. Dennis Stock’s iconic still of a sopping wet James Dean wading through Manhattan is a grand piece of art, and former NME photog Anton Corbijn attempts to translate that magic on to a moving screen. Corbijn has tread similar waters […]

THE SINKING OF SOZOPOL    director: Kostadin Bodev    30th European Union Film Festival    Monday, November 23, 2015, 8:45 pm    ByTowne Cinema, 325 Rideau Street    Be prepared for a soaking. This is one wet film. There is rain, there is ocean, there is vodka. Ten bottles worth in fact. When Chavo returns to the seaside village of […]

HELLIONS    director: Bruce McDonald    opens September 25th    Big screen. BIG SCREEN. I cannot emphasize this enough, this must be seen on the big screen. Or at least duck tape yer eyeWatch directly to pupil. Fairly flacid early reviews means basement critics cannot get past their little screens to see the full blown mastery of Bruce McDonald’s “Hellions”. […]

Z FOR ZACHARIAH directed by Craig Zobel september 4 – 10th The Mayfair Theatre, 1074 Bank Street Act locally, think globally; especially post apocalypse. Margot Robbie is the last supermodel, er God-fearing farmer on earth, wiling the lonely days away in what is probably the last unscorched valley, until the men invasion. One by one, two dudes stumble to town […]

MOUNTAIN MEN directed by Cameron Labine opens Sept. 4th Don’t eat the pot cookies man. That’s the lesson here. Of course “here” is Revelstoke, land of mountains, trees, snow and endangering wildlife. The Canadian dream can turn on a fancy-shipped dime in a hurry, especially when life-long brothers (same mother, it’s true) Cooper and Toph have themselves an outdoorsy adventure. A snow […]

– TURBO KID directors: Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell [in attendance at August 28th screening] starts August 28th Mayfair Theatre, 1074 Bank Street Vroom vroom vroom! Let the circular sawing begin. Anyone a little squeamish about gushing dismembered body parts may want to take a pass, though when presented with low budget, cartoony panache, gorefests like “Turbo Kid” make […]

  SOAKED IN BLEACH director: Benjamin Statler premieres july 24, the Mayfair Theatre, 1074 Bank Street As conspiracy theories go, the Courtney killed Kurt one is a doozie, and as this totally biased, one-sided take on the happenings reveals: there are a lot of questions left unanswered. Filmed as a strange docudrama, “Soaked In Bleach” intercuts actual interviews with dramatic re-enactments […]

These three scallywags from Ottawa are making some big noise and getting some serious buzz from their first couple of singles (both from a forthcoming debut album, due Spring 2015). Collectively known as The Jerry Gross Organization (a not-so-subtle nod to the filmmaker Jerry Gross), these guys are film nerds and music nerds, which is a great combo. This is […]

BOYHOOD Director: Richard Linklater The Mayfair Theatre, August 15 – 28 When prodded for opinion upon exiting the theatre I shrugged and coyly blurted, “Meh”. That was just a bit of fun, as everyone surely knows, Boyhood has been showered with universal acclaim and declared a landmark cinematic masterpiece. Shot over a twelve-year span with the same cast, Boyhood lets […]

The Sacrament Director: Ti West The Mayfair Theatre, June 20 – 24 1074 Bank Street Found footage horror! It’s the latest craze kids. Tough to pull off though, especially when the filmmaker slips into crosscutting and slick, multi angle edits. Whoops. Anyhoo, any good horror film will suspend rational thinking about what silly craziness is happening on screen, and get the […]

The Husband dir. Bruce McDonald The Mayfair Theatre 1074 Bank Street Thursday, May 1,  9:30 pm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c94wQF3u4S8 Shot in bleak hospital hues – all washed out blue gray greens – The Husband marks Canadian filmmaking icon Bruce McDonald’s foray away from healthy cinema. This is a sickly piece of film. No good can come of it. Blame Maxwell McCabe-Lokos. He co-wrote, and he hogs […]

Alan Partridge dir. Declan  Lowney British, 2013, 90 minutes April 4 – 7 The Mayfair Theatre 1074 Bank Street Either you love British humour or are utterly confused by it. Now that the riff raff are gone, let’s proceed.  Though his hilariously awkward media personality Alan Partridge has been bringing the funny for years across the pond, most of North […]

  Cielo Oscuro (Dark Heaven) directed by Joel Calero Peru, 2012, 77 minutes Spanish with English sub-titles 18th Latin American  Film Festival Auditorium, 395 Wellington St., Saturday, March 29, 2014, 7:00 pm Not so much a stinker, but more a lingering, odd odor of a movie, Dark Heaven delivers on none of its promises of passionate, dark and stylish. That is […]

Serra Pelada / Bald Mountain directed by Heitor Dhalia (Brazil) March 27th 395 Wellington, National Archives 18th Latin American  Film Festival 1980s Brazil was a time of ridiculous short shorts and a crazy gold rush. Desperate times plus desperate measures equals riveting plot fodder, which in this case, makes for grand cinema. Bald Mountain  follows two lifelong friends who flee […]

Here Comes The Devil directed by Adrian Garcia Bogliano February 21-22nd, 26-27th Mayfair Theatre, 1074 Bank Street There was a time when horror movies had to rely on basic tricks of the trade to make audiences squirm. Tricks like shadows, brooding music, a convoluted mystery plot, and maple syrup gore. Adrain Garcia Bogliano cranks out a classic seventies style shlock […]

When Jews Were Funny directed by Alan Zweig February 7th – 10th Mayfair Theatre, 1074 Bank Street Classic joke: when a lifeguard presents a mother her barely saved son, she deadpans “He had a hat”. The answer to the title of doc maker Alan Zweig’s latest is of course, “always”. On some sort of strange quest, Zweig tries to explore […]

My Stuff  (Finland) directed by Petri Luukkainen Wednesday, February 5th, 9pm, 395 Wellington, National Archives 4th Baltic-Nordic  Film Festival In an early life crisis, filmmaker Petri Luukkainen decides to ditch all of his worldly possessions, in a storage locker. But instead of heading to the hills in search of communal living, Petri allows himself the trickle luxury of retrieving one item […]

I first connected with Maggie Padlewska a few years back, when I was working on a documentary pitch and needed some video help. A mutual friend connected us via email so we could compare notes. Sadly, she was unavailable to take on other projects because she was kicking off something of her own. Maggie is a journalist and producer by […]

– EURO FILM TALK WITH TOM MCSORLEY – Poor, poor Tom McSorley. Imagine, having to globe trot in search of fabulous film to debut for us lucky voyeurs. As Executive Director of the annual European Union Film Festival, he spies offerings from places like Cannes, Berlin and TIFF, then plays movie Santa Claus for Ottawa movie buffs. As the festival […]